I was able to play a little bit with my sewing machine over the weekend. I had some scrap pieces of fabric so I used them to test several lines of decorative stitches. They would have looked smoother if I'd put interfacing between the fabrics, but even so are very pretty stitches.
Saturday morning I went to another sale at the fabric store in neighboring Tiny Town. The owner didn't have time to do demonstrations, but she had several quick gifts on display with handouts of the instructions. The one I really liked was a little purse made from a hard cover book.
Similar to these
https://www.pinterest.com/asdesigns/book-purses/
I bought a pair of purse handles to try the idea sooner or later.