This is the yoga mat bag used by the heroine Ashlyn in Jaycee Weaver’s Contemporary Romance novella, Braver With You. Jaycee asked me to design the bag for her.

Ashlyn’s yoga mat bag is both pretty and practical. I made the base of the bag a little large, so that it will fit a variety of lengths of mat, and my husband (who does yoga every week) says that a larger base helps protect his mat a little better when he has to walk or bike with it to his yoga class. My husband’s mat was extra-thick so it was a slightly snugger fit than my own (cheap) thin yoga mat. In the photos, it is his mat inside the bag.

The strap is knit with the drawstring so that the weight, when carried, is distributed around the entire top of the bag rather than just from a small section where the strap would otherwise be attached.

I also made the drawstring long so that the bag top could be opened as widely as possible, and there is a shoulder pad that doubles as a cinch to tighten the top of the bag closed.