With every new karate outfit comes a brand new white belt, or obi. Once you've advanced even a single rank, this new white belt is useless, or so I thought. Get a whole bunch of "useless" though, and they can be a craft project!

To begin assembly, I did a lot of trial weaving and pinning of the straps. I wanted to have as little cutting and sewing as possible because my machine is older and not of industrial strength. Sewing two layers of belt would be more than challenging for it - these belts are very thick. This part of the project was like a puzzle! How could I make the best use of the sizes of belt I had? I enjoyed this part very much because I love a challenge.

Since all the belts I had were white when I began my first bag, I tried to dye them black. This gave the unexpected, but interesting, result of them all coming out differing shades of gray! The variations actually add something to the look of the bag.

For the gray bag, I ended up cutting 6 pieces for the horizontal strips and top finishing strip. I sewed 5 of these into loops for the horizontal strips, breaking lots of needles along the way. I also cut 8 pieces that were long enough to weave down one side, across the bottom, and up the other side of the bag. Finally, I cut a very long piece to be the shoulder strap and woven lengthwise along the bottom.

I then wove the verticals through the horizontal loops and made lots of adjustments to make sure they were tight together.

Below is a close-up of a karate belt. There are seven seams running the length of it. In order to keep from sewing more than two layers, I ripped a couple of the seam lines in the top finishing strip and opened up that belt.

I trimmed the verticals to be even all the way around the bag and slipped their top edges into the opened-up finishing strip. Then, I attempted to sew a straight line around this finishing strip to hold all the verticals in place. I left the shoulder strap out of the finishing strip so that the length of it could be easily adjusted with one little seam.

A friend who saw the first bag requested I make another with colored belts. I made hers with two handles for more of a tote bag style and an extra-long vertical that could be tucked in to hold the bag closed. She absolutely loved it and encouraged me to make more and sell them. The problem is that the part I really like is figuring out the pattern in the first place, not the assembly of the bag over and over again.

Here are the insides of the bags. My friend wanted an all-blue bottom for her bag so it wouldn't look dirty too quickly. This meant that all the verticals and the handles must be blue.