Sew Powerful Purse #508 for 2025

This might be my final purse for the year 2025 to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. I do have more to finish making, but I need to rest my rib cage and stop sewing for a while. I bent over few weeks ago to pick up something I dropped on the floor, I could feel a popping movement in my rib cage. The pain has increased and I think it is because I have not rested enough. Sometimes we are forced to rest and this is that time. At least I ended on a high note with this purse. While I will donate this purse to Sew Powerful, I may set it aside with one more purse for their trip to Zambia in July, because 2 of the purses I make will be hand given to 2 girls and I will receive a photo of each of them holding a purse I made. It is the Picture Your Purse prize that I received from the 2025 Fundraiser by raising $1,000 or more or being one of the Top Ten purse makers during the Sew-a-thon in September. I was both! Yay (thanks to all the people who supported me in this fundraising effort, like YOU)!!! So I will receive 2 photos of 2 different girls holding 2 different purses that I made for them. I think this is one of the purses I will send in for that. I also should choose the other purse from the purses that I finished and set it aside, so that I have it ready to send in as it gets closer to their Zambia trip.

I started making the purses the last week in December of 2020 (made 9 that last week of the year); so in the 5 years I have been making purses, 1,462 is the grand total of purses made. That is an average of 292.40 purses per year.

I got the inspiration to make this flap from seeing a painting on Pinterest. Pinterest is very inspiring, don't you think? I painted the background with paint-sticks and texture plates. The flower is appliqué. I wrote the words using an acrylic pen.

The purse body in the gold fabric print was given to me by my fabric fairy. My fabric fairy has given me quite a lot of wonderful fabrics that happen to be so perfect to make these purses.

Pin It Now!

Sew Powerful Purses #506-507 for 2025

I had fun playing with the leftover scraps of denim that I had from making purses from upcycled denim jeans. The decorative stitches add a nice touch to the flap, along with some buttons and hotfix crystals. I even made the other purse body pieces using up scraps of the denim as well. All will be donated to Sew Powerful Purse Project.

Upcycled denim jean scraps and decorative machine stitches to create purse flap.

Upcycled denim scraps from jeans for purse body along with decorative machine stitches.

Scrappy pieced flap and appliqué curved center with decorative machine stitches.

Zentangle piece I made years ago that I used for the flap lining.

Pin It Now!

Sew Powerful Purses #503-505 for 2025

Another 3 Sew Powerful Purses completed.

I love this stencil to use for the flaps. Painted texture background.

This African fabric print, given to me by my fabric fairy, was perfect to use for the purse body. I made the flap months ago, so when I received this fabric, I knew this would be the perfect flap to pair with the African print fabric.

Some patchwork I made a while back made a nice flap, along with the appliqué flower.

I painted this piece of fabric a long time ago with circle stencils. I decided to quilt the flap and fussy cut the hot air balloon to appliqué onto the flap. The bright red solid fabric I had just enough to make one purse body to go with this purse flap 😉. It made a winning combination for this purse.

Pin It Now!

Sew Powerful Purses #500-502 for 2025

3 purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project.

The appliqué I added to this painted flap background is an Ankara design meaning beauty, so I also added the word, beauty. The smallest alphabet lettering I had was still a bit large to fit onto the flap, so I got creative with the placement of the letters. As you can see, beauty just barely fit. The painted background was done by dipping sliced pieces of pool noodles into paint and stamping onto the canvas fabric. The darker circles were the first dip into the paint and I continued to stamp without adding more paint to the pool noodle to get the lighter circles.

This African fabric was given to me by my fabric fairy, 😄.

I made a second flap with the Ankara symbol for beauty, but on this flap I used a computer font to write onto the flap with an acrylic pen. The background was paint-sticks rubbed over a lid I saved from a frozen dessert that had a raised interior design. I sewed on some buttons in the centers of some  of the designs.

Another African fabric from my fabric fairy. 😂

I found this piece of fabric that I had played with years ago, trying Zentangle designs on a stencil Monstera leaf. I added a few crystals and turned it into a flap for a purse.

Yes, my fabric fairy gave me this African fabric print too. Every few inches was the word HIGH-LIFE printed throughout this fabric.

Pin It Now!

Sunset Ridge Lap Size Quilt

I used part of a jelly roll to make this quilt and scraps of white and off white for the background fabrics. It measures 46" wide x 60" high. I used polyester batting for warmth and a flannel backing for added softness. My son is coming for a visit and I wanted to make a quilt that would keep him warm on the cold nights we have been having. The jelly roll was from Amazon. The other fabrics I already had. This will be a nice extra quilt to have on hand when needed. Sunset Ridge is a free quilt pattern from Moda Fabrics. I made mine larger than the pattern. It was a quick quilt to make and easy too. I alternated the jelly roll fabrics I had. I could have used one color family per row, but decided to mix them up.

I quilted this quilt with a serpentine stitch.

Closeup.

Flannel llama backing.

Label.

My stamped label.

Pin It Now!

Sew Powerful Purses #498-499 for 2025

2 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project.

Texture painted flap background with appliqué flower. 

Pin It Now!

Sew Powerful Purses #494-497 for 2025

4 painted stenciled purse flaps of African woman and painted texture backgrounds. Donating to Sew Powerful Purse Project.

These are both African fabric prints.

Pin It Now!