Sew Powerful Purses #44-47 for 2025

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all. 🍀🍀🍀I don't have any Irish blood, although when I first had my DNA tested, I did have a wee bit of Irish, but that keeps changing as new information is shared. Now it seems I have a wee bit of Scottish blood instead, like 1%. 

Here are the last 4 purses I made to donate to Sew Powerful. On the Facebook Group we are given monthly challenges for fun and this month was flowers. I made flower flaps and paired them with green fabric purse bodies. The solid green was an upcycle from a Starbuck's apron from my daughter. I have other purses that I started making from aprons too and need to finish those so I can share them with you soon.

The flap on the left I used crayons to color the basket and flowers, stems and leaves and then added some hand embroidery and crystals on. The background was too stark white, so I got out my acrylic marking pens and colored the background with dots to it's less white and won't show the dirt quite as easily now. Glad that finally got used in something. The selvage flap has an appliqué flower with double stacked buttons.

A fun green print for teenage girls. 

Back side with pockets.

These two flaps were made by upcycling a rainbow dyed knit tank top and cutting 1/4 of Hawaiian flowers that I appliquéd to the flaps. The white backgrounds I used either paint sticks or markers. A few embroidered flowers and flower buttons I sewed on too.

The same green print on the left purse and the upcycled green Starbucks apron on the right.

Back with pockets. The green Starbucks apron has 2 front apron pockets, so I was able to use one apron pocket on the back here.

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Easy Going Knit Swoncho

I saw the Easy Going Swoncho online recently and love how this looked. It is a combination of a knit poncho and sweater (hence the name, Swoncho). I like the look of most ponchos, but they just don't look or hang right on me and I tend to fiddle with them as they slide off my shoulder or twist somehow, ugh! Plus, how to you carry a bag/purse with a poncho? Under the poncho? It won't fit over one very well, at least not on me. This Swoncho looks a bit like a poncho, but behaves more like a pullover sweater and I love that! It has normal sleeves, not those sleeves at the forearms with the huge gap under the arms! I don't think I would like those, even though I never ever tried one on before.

This was an easy knit too, a huge bonus for me! The only thing I had to change is the length of the sleeves and only because I knew I didn't have enough yarn to knit to the wrists or even 3/4 sleeves, which is what I prefer. I wasn't sure when to to stop knitting, since I had to knit 2 sleeves and didn't want to run out of yarn on the second sleeve. I ended up with a small amount of yarn leftover, but it would have only added 1/2"+ to each sleeve if I had known in advance that I could have knit a bit more on each sleeve. I need to try this on now that it has been blocked and see what I think of the sleeve length on me. I quickly tried it on before blocking it and it hits about my elbows on the sleeve length. I used my hand dyed yarn that I dyed myself years ago. I used a double strand, since this was thinner weight yarn than the instructions called for.

If I love how this looks and feels on me (and that still needs to be determined), I might try making another one with the longer sleeves and using up a lot of my various leftover yarn amounts, blending them in as I knit.

Knit with 2 yarns held together throughout that I hand dyed myself.

Center stitches down front (back and sleeves also have this same stitching).

Bottom edging clsoeup.

Sleeve closeup.

Find the FREE pattern on Cascade Yarns HERE.  Thank you Cascade Yarns for this free pattern!

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Southwest Stars Table Runner

I made this table runner over a month ago and recently quilted and added the binding on it. I took it to the gift shop where I sell things and it should sell there eventually as Southwest items do very well there.

I really liked making this star block (Spinning Star?) and it's fun to see how it looks in different colors. I made some of these stars for the SAHRR quilt (2025) where I added 2 rows on my quilt. The completed quilted SAHRR will be shared soon, as will all the others who have finished their SAHRR quilts, so be looking for it.

Southwest fabric prints in batik, plus the orange rust and cream color fabrics are batik and the binding is batik fabric too.

I like how there is a secondary star in the rust orange color that appears as you sew together the blocks. Plus, the brown frames both the turquoise stars as well as the rust orange stars.

A simple serpentine stitch was used for the quilting.

The backing is a Southwest print of Indian arrows. This is not batik fabric though.

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Sew Powerful Purses #42-43 for 2025

2 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. Aren't these bunnies/rabbits cute? I am pretty sure these are from one of the Art to Heart books I have by Nancy Halvorsen, but I don't remember which book it came from? I do have a quite a few of her books because I love her sweet appliqué designs. Hmmm... maybe I should make other purses with some of her designs, reducing the sizes as needed to fit the flaps. Talk about going down a rabbit hole!!!😂😆😄🐇🐰🐇🐰🐇

2 cute bunny (or rabbit) purses. These bunnies started out to be fabric quilted postcards that never got completed as postcards. I found them recently and thought these would make such cute purses, so here are 2 bunny purses! I hope the girls find them cute.

Closer look at the bunny/rabbit. 

Front pockets and flaps linings. Isn't that flap lining perfect for the those bunnies/rabbits? Carrots, peas, radishes and roses, in case bunny gets hungry. 😄🐇🐇🐰🐰🐰

Back slip pockets.

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Sew Powerful Purses #39-41 for 2025

3 Scrappy Pieced Heart flap purses made to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. 2 have batik purse bodies and one has a fun print of clouds in purple, pink and white.

Scrappy pieced hearts on all flaps.

Front of purses with pocket.

All have slip pockets on the back of the purses.

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Sew Powerful Purses #37-38 for 2025

2 more purses completed to donate to Sew Powerful. I had enough of those little squares left to create one more flap, like the flap I shared with you recently. I also found a Square-in-a-Square quilt block and added strips around it to make a flap for the other purse. It sure feels great to use up some of those things that were started, but never put into anything. Now 2 more girls will be able to stay in school all year without missing any school days due to their monthly period.

One batik print for the purse body and one print of giraffes and elephants.

Back pockets for each.

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Sew Powerful Purses #35-36 for 2025

2 scrappy pieced batik purse flaps with batik purse bodies. These will be donated to Sew Powerful.

I had started to make a mystery quilt with the little squares as one of the clues, but I decided against making it as I would need a ton of those little squares and it would take me forever to make! Using it in a purse flap was a much better idea! I added more batik fabric strips to the squares and I think it came out rather nice.

I used this pink batik print for the purse body and a couple of other fabrics for the lining. The next purse also has the same lining and batik fabrics.

Back pocket.

This is a die cut I had and it wasn't very large. It was meant to be used for card making, but I wanted to try it in fabric. I cut out the words in purple and the background behind the words in a fabric I had painted and only had a scrap of it left. It looks nice, but it would have been tedious to blanket stitch all around it, so I brushed on a liquid vinyl over it to prevent it from fraying and it worked out great! It is permanently part of the fabric now. I also sewed the buttons in place by sewing stems, leaves and flowers.

Pocket on the back with an added strip in the middle.

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