Patchouli Moon Studio: Born to be Wild Blog Hop

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Born to be Wild Blog Hop: Sew Powerful Purses

Thanks Carol for another wild & fun blog hop!

Born to be Wild is this blog hop and I knew right away what I wanted to make. I sew purses for the wonderful organization, Sew Powerful and I send them purses that I make to donate to the girls in Zambia, which helps to keep them in school. You can read all about the Sew Powerful Purse Project here. I hope you will consider making some purses too and you can also join their Facebook group for inspiration and sharing too.

I am also on the design team at Crafter's Edge , so I wanted to be able to incorporate using some die cuts into what I made as well. I chose the 1 1/2" strip die cut and using the Crafter's Edge Crossover II die cutting machine to make quick work of cutting up some strips using up some of my light colored batik scraps. I sewed the strips together in a scrappy way to create a background for one of my purses. Then I appliqued an elephant onto that purse flap. The girls in Zambia tend to love the colors purple and orange over most colors, so I chose those colors for the elephant applique.

Then, I just had to make this adorable owl for one of my purse flaps. So much fun to use up scraps for this wild cutie.

I wanted to use another couple of die cuts to use on another purse flap, so I created a Moon over the Mountain flap using the largest Equilateral Triangle die cut and a circle die cut that I appliqued to the flap. I echo quilted around this flap. Do you think this fits the wild theme? Maybe it's Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa; although my mountain has a pointed peak. Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest single free-standing mountain in the world. Standing at 19,308 feet above sea level, so that makes Mount Kilimanjaro pretty wild in my book. At any rate, I hope you enjoy seeing the purses that I made and I know 3 girls in Zambia will love receiving and using these purses too.

I started with a 5 sided shape in the center and then I used Crafter's Edge 1 1/2" die cut strip cutter to quickly cut out the strips and sew them around the center shape to create the background for the flap. I added the elephant and used a crystal for the eye. There is a butterfly that apparently got placed a bit too high (lesson learned) which you can see better in a photo down below a ways.

Side of the purse I like to add a rivet for making the strap a bit more secure.

The back of the purse showing the fabric better.

I just got my custom labels and can now add these on the underside of the flaps that I make.

Underside of the flap with my new label.

Flap open up to see the butterfly.

I couldn't resist making this owl for one of the purse flaps.

I did the same thing here with the butterfly a bit too high.

Label on the underside of the flap of this purse.

Moon Over Mountain purse flap. I used Crafter Edge largest equilateral triangle for the moon and a circle die cut for the moon. Like I mentioned earlier, this could be Mount Kilimanjaro (although my mountain is a bit too pointy on top). Being the largest free standing mountain in the world makes this pretty wild to me!