Pretty Little Purses and Pouches

The other day I stopped at Tea Time Quilting looking for some funky prints (their specialty) and found a copy of 'pretty little purses & pouches' on sale.  Lark Books has published about a dozen of books in this series and have come up with a winner on this one as it has a lot of interesting ideas for purses and pouches.   



I decided to try out one of the designs and I immediately fell in love with the organization of the book.  There is a comprehensive, but not expensive, list of tools.  Basic construction techniques are gathered together at the front of the book.  The patterns are tiny but are easily blown up at your local copy center to fit a standard sheet of paper... a really good thing!  And finally there were no errata to plow through which happens a lot in this type of publishing.  I think someone independently tested the patterns so that major problems were eliminated.


Here is the pattern I tried:

I haven't set snaps in a few years but thought that I would remember the major steps.  Needless to say, I spoiled many snaps and a lot of scrap fabric discovering that snaps weren't about to happen.  I ended up using Velcro and a couple of odd buttons for the closures.  


Here is my interpretation of the snap attack purse:

I used some old silk dupioni for both the exterior and lining and a couple of odd buttons to cover the thread used to attach the Velcro.


This is a clever design with two little compartments that seem perfectly sized for a cell phone and  small wallet.  Micha Mae Melancon (blog and Etsy shop), the designer, has created a wonderful project that could be size up or down depending on your needs.


Now I'll have to try some other projects in the book like this:

or this:

or maybe this:

Or maybe I will stop avoiding what needs to be done around here and find out what my little pee machine (aka Alex) has been doing all afternoon.