Long Weekend Bag

My cat was hanging out in my new photo spot so I just went with it.

This is the year of luggage for me. I used to have one large backpack that I used for backpacking that I would use for all trips. It was great for backpacking and pretty terrible at all other functions. It was too big and ungainly for a long weekend, wrinkled formal wear whenever I balled it up at the bottom of it to take it to a wedding, and the straps always ran the risk of getting caught up at the airport. That said, my partner used to use a garbage bag as his luggage so it could've been worse.
This year I bought myself some rolling luggage and made this bag for weekend trips.

This bag is large. My 24lb cat looks normal next to it.

This is the duffel bag from the Portside Travel Set from Grainline Studios. I had admired a few of these on other blogs and thought I could make one out of stash fabric which in my head meant it was free despite spending $14 on a pattern. So I did. The stash fabric meant that this is a bit odd looking. The bottom is pleather leftover from my Xena costume and the upper and lining fabric were from a time when I decided to make everyone I knew bags for Christmas and then didn't. At all. I found the zipper in my stash and purchased the strapping and hardware at Dressew, though I do wish it was dark brown instead of black. I didn't interface the bag as directed as I figured the pleather was pretty sturdy and I didn't want to buy much to make this.

The pattern goes together quite easily for the most part. It's mostly rectangles. The directions are very clear and I found that things went smoothly with 2 exceptions:

1. Sewing the bottom rectangle onto the bag at the corners. This was really tricky and I felt like I was doing it wrong. I did not get a neat finish on this.
2. topstitching on the bottom of the bag. This was a disaster and I couldn't do the corners. This may have been due to the pleather being essentially plastic but it looks like garbage.

I followed the directions except for when it came to attaching the lining. You are supposed to hand stitch the lining to the zipper but I kept stabbing myself so I gave up and used the machine with a zipper foot to do this.

Let the record show that I do not think these fabrics coordinate in any way.

Despite the poor aesthetics of this bag due to fabric choice, it is an excellent bag. It's the perfect size for a weekend trip and it feels very sturdy. I took it on a ski trip before lining it and it worked perfectly. I may one day make one in fabrics chosen for this purpose but for now I will get lots of use out of this one.
Have you made luggage? Do you have coordinated luggage or do you use a garbage bag?