Thanks everyone, you really give me a lot of encouragement to marshal onward.
I keep wanting to make an avant-garde handbag, something a little out there but not too much. I'm not crazy about large bags, the one above is about 9 1/2" long, 6 1/2 high and 4 1/2 deep, just enough to comfortably carry essentials, but I want to make something "different". One of these days the right idea will strike...hopefully.
Jingle, bags really aren't that difficult, and don't use a whole lot of materials, so not very expensive to experiment with. I started using Fat Batt for the batting but they stopped selling it so now I use Thermolam, it seemed to be a bit heftier a few years ago but it's still plenty firm enough to give the bag structure without being hard to quilt.