Dance / Gym Bag – Pattern Review

It is frustrating when making a new pattern and you can’t find any blog/tips/video on how to get through the hard parts. So I’m mostly writing this post for those that may need it in the future for a, new to me, gym bag pattern.

The gym bag pattern

Let’s start with the pattern. It’s by Rebecca Page and it’s called the Gym Bag pattern and it is a duffel style bag with multiple compartments including a shoe pocket and water bottle pocket. The bag is large enough for anything in the future that Lilli might need for her dance or other sports activities.

While searching around for gym bag patterns – most of the ones I found were plain duffel bags that look like rectangular black holes .. and I was looking for … some sort of organization. Rebecca Page’s gym bag has a built-in clothing bag, shoe compartment, water bottle pocket, and three different zipper pockets, with the main draw being the shoe compartment, because who wants dirty shoes messing up your clean clothes?!

And of COURSE the shoe compartment that I so wanted was THE ONE particular piece that gave me the MOST headaches. More on that later.

Other bags I have made: Waterproof backpack I made for Lilli; backpack I made for myself.

The Sewing instructions

One of my pet peeves is having to print unnecessary pattern pieces – and unfortunately this pattern had a handful of those. For example, the pocket flap pieces, there was one for the main fabric and another piece for the lining. Except, they were the exact same size so I could have saved some paper and time by just having one piece that said cut 2; one from main fabric, one from the lining. So I think the pattern pieces could have been more streamlined. 

The fabric

Customizing this gym bag was fairly easy because it had so many different pieces that came together. I can see it being a solid one color bag or like the one I made, color blocked for school colors or other coordinating fabrics. 

The fabrics I used were duck canvas – leftovers from fabric mask making. I had a little bit of both the solid teal and the floral teal and figured I could use them together. Its a good thing Lilli likes ALL colors of the rainbow, because I didn’t really ask her for her opinion on fabrics. 

Lining was similarly color blocked with whatever “coordinating” fabric I could find – which was a light blue and light teal cotton. Both main and lining pieces were interfaced with medium weight fusible interfacing from the Fashion Sewing Supply (highly recommend their interfacing).

The Embroidery

Other customization I did was embroidery – of course! I’ve been itching to do some bag embroidery!!

One night, trying to go to bed but failing because I have so many ideas swirling at the end of the day (do you have this issue?) anyway … I had a vision of the word “DANCE” buuuuut each letter having a silhouette of a different kind of dance. You know, because Lilli can’t just pick one, she loves them all. So we have Irish “D”, ballet “A”, kathak “N”, tap “C”, and musical theater “E” – all of which Lilli has done or will do (she’s trying out Irish dance this summer). 

Then I wrote out/embroidered the names of different dances all over the two side pieces, being careful of where the side straps would go.

Tricky Steps/Pieces

Okay, remember I was telling you about the shoe compartment? Here’s the more on that part..

The compartment is closed with a curved flap connected by a zipper. So there is the flap and the outside piece (which is really the bag bottom). The pattern instructions tell me to install the zipper first to the outside piece then to that curve flap. But for the life of me, I could NOT get it to lay flat; it was bumpy, it was lumpy, it was not something I could live with as good enough. 

I was kind of frustrated with it and wanted to shove the whole bag in a dark corner of my closet. 

Instead … I took a break, painted something to calm down and then decided to just move on to the next piece and see how far I could go before having to revisit this bumpy flap situation. 

Once I got to the other zipper installation – the one for the main compartment I could see that it was similar to the shoe compartment; except the curve wasn’t as prominent. I approved it hopeful but also skeptical..

The instructions were the same, but something in my brain told me to flip the instructions – install the zipper to the curved flap first, theeeen the outside piece. Once I did that, I noticed the zipper length was a little off than the recommended length in the instructions. But it did work out!

So hesitantly, I tried the shoe compartment flap one more time – this time installing the zipper to the curved flap first and again, noticed the recommended zipper length was a tad bit too long here as well. So I suggest cutting the recommended length of zipper tape and just seeing how the zipper fits onto the flap first  before attaching it to the outside piece.

Improvements that could be made

Some things that could have been improved on were the pictures in the instructions. The steps would have been better to understand with more contrasting fabrics or completely different colors for each piece. It would have made steps like adding the shoe compartment or how to attach the lining a little easier.

Another tricky part was attaching the lining of the side pieces to the main middle piece – some places had you attach the lining to the main fabric as well. And then there are other places where the lining was separated, so trying to figure out all of that and maneuvering fabric around a sewing machine was tricky to say the least. I would imagine that if you were to use vinyl or something a little heavier that the construction would need to change (or you’d need a more powerful sewing machine).

Mistakes I Made

The one mistake I made was not lining the shoe compartment. I didn’t think that I needed to. I interfaced it, but I did not line it. And you definitely want to line it because otherwise, you see the wrong side of the compartment when you open up the main compartment. I’m thinking of creating another shoe compartment and sliding it over the existing one and hand stitching it in .. I’m not about to take any of it apart to fix it! I’m waaay past that point. lol

Hardware

Oh I forgot!! I got to use my Kam Snap Press to add some hardware. I added them to the side straps as well as the shoulder strap connectors. I love how the rivets make it look a bit more professional. The ones I used are 6mm gun metal from Emmaline Bags.

The rainbow zipper tape and rainbow zipper pulls were from Sew Sweetness. The heart zipper pull on the shoe compartment was from Emmaline Bags. The welt pocket zipper, on the back side, was salvaged from an old bag that happened to be the perfect color. 

The water bottle pockets also got some hardware – pearl snaps to keep the pockets closed when not in use.

conclusion

Overall, I’m pleased with the end product. If you can get through the construction more smoothly than I did, then you’ll have a very nice gym bag with plenty of organization built into it. So I would recommend it for its features, but advise that you have made a bag or two before taking this up because the instructions are harder to follow.

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