Adventures in sewing: Yoga mat strap and buttonholes

I started taking yoga again - YAY! I'm pretty sure it helps my mental sanity - I'm not kidding. Anyway, I decided that I wanted a yoga mat strap so I could be one of the cool kids. You can easily pick one up at Target and they're pretty inexpensive, but I figured "Hey! Why not make one?". The answer to that question is because that one I wanted to make had buttonholes (so it is self-adjusting, which is fabulous) and anyone who knows anything about buttonholes knows that beginning sewers/sewists should STAY FAR FAR AWAY FROM THEM. Ah yes, but not me. My books made it sound easy. Does your machine have a four-step buttonhole? Yep, sure does - PIECE OF CAKE! Ha. I tried to make a buttonhole on a scrap piece of fabric for about TWO HOURS. Keep in mind that I hadn't even made the actual strap yet. I had a feeling the buttonhole would trip me up, so I wanted to get that down before I got all excited about the strap and then ended up stalling on the buttonhole.

Here are my buttonhole tries:

Some of these look semi-successful, but I assure you, they only assumed that look because of me and my yanking on the fabric to sew something I could actually cut apart (novel concept for a buttonhole, I know):

At this point I decided to stop sewing and bake cookies. The good old "step away from it before you throw your sewing machine out the window" mantra worked! I returned after eating about a dozen cookies and decided that I was going to make the yoga mat strap and make my own buttonhole. Take THAT four-step buttonhole maker!  My "fake" buttonhole theory works, but it's just not as consistent, although, as you can see from above, the actual buttonhole maker wasn't very consistent either. Fake buttonhole = a little zig-zag action to form each long side and a couple zig-zags at the top and bottom with some extra backstitching for reinforcement. Ta-da:

And now for the finished product:

I'm now the proud owner of a homemade yoga may strap! :)