In the hoop pocket purse

This is an easy project for someone with embroidery software. There's even a free tutorial from Bernina, which uses their software, but it should be possible to figure it out from the tute.
Bernina tutorial for the pocket purse.

What you do is:

1. Make sandwich with Fabric right side up, then a layer of cutaway stabilizer, and another piece of fabric right side down.
2. Hoop this and stitch out the pattern. 
3. Trim the edges close to the satin stitching, add a closure and fold the bottom over. 
4. Zigzag the right and left sides down, and then you have a little purse

To make the pattern:

1.  Place a single stitch long rectangle with a curved top in your design
2. Fill that with a light pattern
3. Add the small rectangle and put a different pattern in it. 
4. Add an oval and put a monogram in it
5. Put a satin stitch around the oval
6. Put a satin stitch around the small rectangle
7. Put a satin stitch around the long rectangle

That's it! Sorry for the poor picture quality, but DH has the camera at the moment and I scanned this in.

Contrast: too much, too little, not quite right

Using Anita Goodmann Solomon's Anita's Arrowhead pattern, I'm playing with contrast. When I see a couple of interesting fabrics, I make a block out of it, trying to find a sweet spot in contrast that pleases me.
So far, so bad, but all are worthy attempts.
Here are

• Too much contrast - the blue and yellow
• Too little - the browns
• Not quite right - the blues

What's missing on the blues is that the bright blue of the one fabric is indeed present in the darker fabric, but in such a small quantity that it looks kinda like they don't match at all.
At least I'm on the learning curve.

top done

The top is done. It's nice and square, even though I didn't smooth out the bottom on the design wall.
Truth be told, I'm kinda sick of this quilt. The front is exactly what I expected, but I can't say I care for it very much. I'll be glad when it's finished and out of my hands.
For quilting, I'll use an overall pattern for the pieced bits, with a lighter color on the lighter fabrics and darker on the dark. Then something simple in the border and sashing. On the back will be the Bassetti sheet that matches the carpet and pillows of the couple's home.
If even I don't care much for the front, I can surely imagine the couple will use the back as often as they use the front, so this time the label will have to be small and inconspicuous. Now there's a challenge for me, queen of the gigantic quilt labels, isn't it? :)
Currently I'm planning to make a teeny tiny label, just one line long, that is sewn at the edge of the binding. Something like,

"For Isa and Philip, on their wedding day, 22 May 2013." 

Oh crap, wait, that might not work out. They had their legal wedding in 2012, and their church wedding is in May. OK, label will have to wait until that gets figured out.
Anyway, here are pics of the top and the backing.

Fraying fabric

I mentioned last week that I was trying a new technique while washing fabrics. Mostly I prefer washing so I can remove the chemical finishing and add starch when I feel like it.
The recommendation was that one sews raw edges together before washing to minimize the edges that can fray. So I tried it, along with a second recommendation of just notching the corners of the raw edges.
Five WOF pieces were sewn together and I notched two longer pieces of fabric.
Here are the results.
The pink fabrics are sewn with a large zigzag stitch, the brown and black were notched.
Conclusion: neither technique is very effective. The sewing technique guarantees that you will spend time and fabric stitching and unstitching (or cutting) the sewn edges. The notching technique had no discernable impact on fraying, but is very fast.
Next technique to try sometime, if I feel like it, is to pink the edges.