Sew Powerful Purses #32-34 for 2026

3 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project that I finished, but hadn't taken photos yet. 

This purse was made with painting a texture background first, then I used my Crafter's Edge die cut

 to cut out the basket and die cut flowers. The basket is actually woven and I blanket stitched around the exterior of the basket only. The fabric that I used for the basket was first treated on the back with Mod Podge fabric formula so that it won't fray where the raw edges are. The flower appliqués are from that rainbow tie dye tank top that I have been upcycling into appliqué flowers. These flowers are small, so I was able to cut them from smaller leftover bits of the tank top. I wasn't sure about this as a purse flap at first, but I really like it. In fact, I am sending this purse, along with another purse I had made last year, to be hand delivered in July to 2 special girls in Zambia. I won 2 Picture Your Purse photos of a girl holding holding a purse I made that will be hand delivered as part of the 2025 Sew Powerful fundraiser event in September. In order to qualify to receive a photo of a purse I made being held by the actual girl who will receive it, I had to help raise $1,000 or more in donations from people like YOU (thank you sooo much!), or make a lot of purses and be in the Top Ten Purse makers during the September Sew-a-thon, which I did by making 160 purses in September alone (508 purses total for all of 2025). If I did both, which I did, then I will receive photos of 2 different girls holding the purses that I made. Something to look forward to later this year. I need to send my 2 purses in 2-4 weeks before they leave for Zambia, so I will hold on to them until then and hope I have more purses to mail in anyhow.

Another flower appliqué from the tank top.

A Paisley Zentangle on painted background. I made the Zentangle years ago in my Zentangle phase, 😆.

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Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) 2026 Prompt One

Brenda of Songbird Designs gave us the first prompt for our SAHRR, which is Hourglass Blocks. I want to make sure I keep this quilt from getting too large (as I cannot quilt large quilts myself anymore), so I opted to make 2 Hourglass quilt blocks and place them on the sides only. Brenda placed her blocks top/bottom only and others may have gone all around the center block. I need to get this photo added to the Linky party on her blog and see what the others have done with this first prompt while I am there. 

Sunflower center block and Hourglass side blocks.

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Sew Powerful Purses #30-31 for 2026

2 scrappy pieced flaps to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. 

2 scrappy batik fabric flaps. I added an iron on flower embroidery to the left purse. I was an Amazon Vine Customer reviewer for 2 months, so I ordered whatever sewing/craft stuff that looked interesting to try. I got a couple of packages of assorted colors and sizes of a few iron on embroidery flowers and this is the first time using it. It worked well, but I prefer my own appliqué to add to a purse flap. 

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Sew Powerful Purses #24-29 for 2026

6 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. More scrappy pieced purse flaps with added flower appliqué. Plus one painted purse flap background and a painted flap lining with added Zentangle on another purse!

The flower appliqué on four of the purse flaps are from that rainbow tank top that I upcycled into various flower appliqués. 2 purses have batik fabric flower appliqué.

I love how the orange part of the tank top flower here really pops on the green scrappy flap.

The background is painted texture. Batik flower here.

I made the strap on this purse using 2 fabrics. The flower is pretty with the blue, green and yellow colors from the rainbow tank top.

I like using extra large buttons as flower centers, and it's even more fun to stack a smaller button on top and stitch a little flower in the center.

I had to share this flap lining. I had experimented with painted texture on fabric years ago and adding some Zentangle on top. I LOVE Echinacea cone flowers and I did this one in Zentangle. It was large and took up the whole flap. I chose to use it as a lining so when it is opened the flap can be fully seen like this. If I have used it for the exterior of the flap, the top of the flower would have folded to the back side of the purse and the entire cone part would have been cut off from view. So it made a better lining and a fun surprise for the girl who receives this purse.

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Sew Powerful Purses #22-23 for 2026

2 scrappy flaps with purple denim purse bodies for Sew Powerful Purse Project donation.

The center purple part of the flap was a square I had pieced a very long, time ago. I made it thinking I would make a nametag pin or just a pin to wear on a coat, but I didn't wear it after all, so I ripped the backing fabric off and pressed it and as you can see I set it on point and sewed more scraps around it to create the purse flap. I am amazed at all the little things I have started over the years that work so well for the purse flaps. The fabrics are batiks, my favorite kind of fabric to use.

Batik fabric scraps purse flap.

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Sew Powerful Purses #17-21 for 2026

5 patchwork purse flaps with purple denim purse bodies to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. The purse flaps were all made with 2-inch squares fused to a gridded interfacing and then sewn to make perfect patchwork flaps. These were fun to make. A great scrap buster too.

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Sew Powerful Purses #15-16 for 2026

Here are a couple of scrappy pieced purse flaps with added flower appliqué. Buttons for the flower centers and extra buttons for bling, plus the flap on the left has some hotfix crystals too. Flower appliqué I upcycled from a rainbow tie dye tank top and die cut the flowers myself. I will miss those rainbow flowers when the tank top is all cut up into flowers. I will have to find a rainbow dyed fabric to die cut more flowers, or just cut other colors.

Sew Powerful Purse Project.

Purple denim for the purse bodies.

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Sew Powerful Purses #13-14 for 2026

2 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. I appliquéd partial Dresden Plate blocks to the flaps and added some buttons.

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Sew Powerful Purses #11-12 for 2026

I have been sewing again and getting some purses made for Sew Powerful Purse Project. I had cut out many kits so I could sew them whenever I wanted to sew. I needed to take some time off from sewing after popping something in my ribcage, and while I am not 100% better yet, I am getting close to 100%, so sewing a bit here and there is working well.

These 2 were from a panel of fabrics that was a donation fabric. It is a drapey fabric, and the colors are so pretty and there are many other designs on the panel as well. I used only a few for flaps and the others I used for lining flaps in other purses that I made or will make.

A sweet friend gave me a gift card to Etsy for my birthday last November and one of the items I got was this purple denim fabric. The photo on Etsy showed a very bright purple that was almost Fuchsia colored and I loved it, but what I received was this lighter purple that is more of a lavender shade of purple instead. Since these purses are made to donate, I kept it and used it to make about a dozen or so purses. The girls who receive the purses won't know, right? 

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2026 Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR)

I am participating again this year making a SAHRR quilt. This is the second year I have participated, but this is the 6th year SAHRR has been happening. For more info or to participate yourself, click on the SAHRR link in the side bar of my blog.

This week Gail and the gang involved in bringing the SAHRR are sharing their center blocks and we have one week to post and share ours on the Linky Party on Gail's blog. Since I knew I needed a center block when it was first announced about this year's SAHRR, I thought about using an orphan or UFO block, but in the end I decided to make a sunflower appliqué block, since I love both sunflowers and appliqué. I will have to wait for the clues each time to decide on what I will do next, since I have no idea what those clues will be and what I will do with the clues to add to this center block.

It does not have to be done in the round either, so I could make one block with the next clue, or a couple of blocks to add to each side of the center (or top/bottom), or? It's all up to me how I want to do it and what size block(s) I will make and where I want to place them. So I could make a Row quilt instead of going around. So I will just wait for the next clue and decide then. It will be as much of a surprise to me as to you. 😄

This block is 9-inch finished or 9 1/2-inch unfinished.

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Sew Powerful Purses #1-10 for 2026

My first 10 completed Sew Powerful Purses for 2026! I had most of the sewing done on these last year, but needed to rest and heal after popping something on my ribcage. I slowly started sewing again a bit here and there and was able to complete these ten purses. 

I painted textures or stencils on the first 5 flaps and added appliqué and the next 5 were scrappy pieced flaps. 

This little print from the 2004 Sisters, Oregon Outdoor Quilt Show, was a tiny tote bag that I cut the print off the front of the little tote to use on this purse flap with added fabric that I pieced to the print to make it large enough for a purse flap. I wish they would sell just small prints like this at their annual quilt show instead of tiny tote bags that aren't very useful as they don't hold much. I bet quilters would buy these prints and save them to make larger quilts or other items, like this purse flap 😉. I should mention this to them, right? I made a purse last year with a different print from one of the Sisters quilt shows too.

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Flower Embroidery in a Hoop

I finished this embroidery that I started last year in December 2025. After hurting my ribcage, I needed some handwork to do, so this was a great reason to get started on this embroidery. I have also been knitting a lot too. Sewing at the machine is now happening slowly and for short periods of time until I am 100% better. I am getting there.

I hadn't done any hand embroidery in a long time! I thought this was a pretty one. It was a kit from Amazon. The embroidery floss that came with the kit wasn't the best quality though and I think it may have been polyester thread instead of cotton, but it didn't say. It came with 2 needles (not great needle quality and not very sharp needles either) and even little scissors (the scissors were not sharp or very good and could barely cut the thread), a needle threader that really didn't work with the needle size and threads used in the kit, and a plastic hoop, which was fine.

This is the back of the hoop embroidery. I stamped a couple of stamps and wrote the month/year I completed this piece. I glued the stiff fabric to the hoop edge to cover up the back of the embroidery stitches.

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Blue String Quilt Blocks for 2026 Scrappy Rainbow Quilt Challenge

I decided to join the Rainbow Quilt Challenge this year (see side bar link) and the first color is blue. I made some blue string quilt blocks. I may need to make more later, but I am not sure how many I will need right now or how I will set the blocks yet, so time will tell.

Here are a few blocks I made~

Blue string quilt blocks for challenge.

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