Sew Powerful Purse 131 (2025)

May's purse theme challenge on the Sew Powerful Facebook group was Butterflies. Each month there is a challenge, just for fun. June's theme is Bees. 3 of my butterfly purses that I made in the past were featured on the post announcing this challenge. We can add our challenge purses anytime to the album in the group, so I will add this one there now as I recently got it finished.

The fabric I used for the body is the same home dec fabric I used for the purses I posted yesterday.

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Sew Powerful Purses #26-28 for 2025

3 more purses completed for Sew Powerful. Two are selvage flaps; one with an embroidered appliqué bird patch and the other with a red shoe, and the one in the middle is scrappy pieced around a fabric that I appliquéd on. I have been wanting to use up some of those embroidered patches I have, so I thought this was the perfect project to use them on.

This is the same African print fabric that I used in the purses I showed yesterday. I was able to get 12 purse bodies out of this African print fabric to pair with different flaps that I made. I bought the fabric a few years ago just for making these purses to donate, so I am glad to finally use it for this cause.

All 3 purses have a back slip pocket too.

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Sew Powerful Purses #23-25 for 2025

I made 3 purse flaps using selvages from various fabrics. Selvages are the ultimate in scrappy sewing! They add so much interest and it's fun to read the names of the fabric line, fabric company, to see the colored dots that show the colors that were used to create that fabric print, to see a peek of the fabric print that I left on the selvages, and sometimes those colored dots aren't dots, but other fun shapes instead. I hope the girls who receive these selvage flap purses like them as much as I do.

All purses are being donated to Sew Powerful.

Selvage flaps with embroidered appliqué patches I sewed in the center of each flap.

Front pockets. Purse body fabric is an African made print I bought a few years ago online.

Back of purses with back pockets. 

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Sew Powerful Purse #13 (2025)

Lucky purse number 13 for this year! Donating to Sew Powerful.

The "Busy Hands" fabric I had for ages and I have a few more from that fabric I made into flaps too. The scraps were from a friend and the plaid fabric for the purse body was a donation from years ago. The plaid is a sturdy fabric and I cut out a few more purses from it that I am sewing now, so will share those when they are finished.

Back with pocket.

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Sew Powerful Purse #1 (for 2025)

This is my first finished purse this year (2025) to donate to the Sew Powerful Purse Project. I used my circular attachment on my sewing machine to create the decorative stitched circles, or partial circles for this flap. It's so fun to play! I added some embroidered flower appliqué trim flowers and even made French knots by hand on stitch that looks like an asterisk. It sure jazzed up this plain purple fabric. 

I may set this purse aside and use it for the Picture Your Purse fundraiser campaign. I joined in last year (the first time they did this), where you make a purse and later send it to one of the people going on the trip to Zambia (which will be this May) and they find a girl to give your purse to and take a photo of them holding your purse. Later you receive an 8"x 10" color photo of the girl holding the purse that you made and they tell you the first name of the girl too. That connection makes it more real to be able to see one girl with a purse that you made. Since I cannot go to Zambia myself, this is the next best thing. 

Decorative stitches done in a circle.

Front pocket under the flap. I love this fabric. Has metallic dots and what looks like paint brushed metallic too over the pretty fabric print.

The back pocket and the entire flap shown here. The top 2 inches or so of the flap folds to the back and isn't seen, but here you can see that orange was a full circle that was stitched.

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Sew Powerful Purses #271-287 (2024)

17 Purple & Orange Scrappy purses! I started with an orange hexagon and sewed purple and neutral scraps log cabin style around the hexagon, which resulted in an unusual look to the flap. Each are a bit different. Some I placed the hexagon with the flat edge on top, some were with the pointed tip at the top. Very modern looking result. Using up those purple scraps! The purse bodies are either purple or orange and I used webbing straps in purple or orange too. These 2 colors are very popular with the Zambian girls.

2 purses.

Front with pocket.

Back with pockets.

5 purses.

Back of purses, with pockets, except the solid one I didn't have enough of that fabric to add a pocket.

3 more purses with orange purse bodies.

Notecards in pockets.

Orange purse backs with pockets.

3 more purses.

Purse fronts with notecards in pockets.

Purse backs with pockets.

4 more purses.

Purse fronts with notecards in each pocket.

Back of purses.

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Sew Powerful Purses #235-238 (2024)

Four more purses to donate to Sew Powerful. 3 of these purse flaps were quilt blocks that I picked up for free several months ago on the freebie table at the quilt group. As soon as I saw them I thought purse flaps! There were several quilt blocks in each stack I got, so I will be sharing the others too another day. They sure made nice flaps. The last one was an appliqué I made quite a while ago.

I got a stack of these quilt blocks all in different prints, some with dark backgrounds like this one and some were light backgrounds. I added a few scraps to bring them up to the flap size and then made the purse body out of corduroy. Added a button with a stitched flower for a bit of bling.

Back slip pocket.

These purse flaps were in another stack of quilt blocks I got. They were all pinwheel quilt blocks in various colors. Again, I added scraps to make them large enough for the flaps and double stacked buttons to give them that pinwheel look.

I also used this corduroy for the purse bodies.

This was an appliqué that I made a while back. I found it and decided it too needed to become a purse flap.

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Sew Powerful Purses #233-234 (2024)

2 purses made with batik fabric scraps for the flaps. The purse on the left has an upcycled denim jeans body, while the purse on the right was made with a woven fabric that looks like it is a Mexican or Guatemalan style fabric, but I am not certain.

Using batik scraps, my fabric fabric scrap because of the bright colors batik fabrics have. I had a couple of small pieces that had Alaska printed on them, so I used it as a focal point. (I made another purse with the Alaska piece like this one too).

Upcycled denim jeans purse body on the left and the woven print on the right.

I added a jean pocket on the back of the purse on the left. I also appliquéd a flower on that pocket. A slip pocket was sewn to the purse on the right.

2 more purses to donate to Sew Powerful.

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Sew Powerful Purses #226-229 (2024)

Two sets of twin purses. The first is a Siamese cat print flap with upcycled denim jeans body. I cut these out months ago to be made into these purses and recently finished them. Several months ago we we told that cats, bats, owls and hyenas are animals that have negative connotations with the people who live in the rural areas of Zambia. We are not to use those animals in our purses, however there are volunteers in Zambia who will sort through the purses and set aside any with those purses with those animals to make sure they are not sent to the rural schools, so while we shouldn't use those animals, the girls who don't live in rural areas are fine with them. I doubt anyone would make a purse with a hyena or even a bat (unless there are little bats on a Halloween fabric), but there have been lots of cats and owl purses made in the past and even recently I have seen those on the Facebook Group. I personally will no longer make any purses with those animals so as to not add a burden to the volunteers there. These were the last ones I had all cut to make into purses and the girls do need them, so these will be the last ones I do with cats. 

I used whatever cat fabric I had and then added strips of fabric to it in order to make it the size needed for cutting the flap.

Upcycled denim jeans for the purse bodies.

This was such a pretty fabric that I made the entire exterior using this fabric. I rarely do plain flaps like this, but if I have enough fabric for the flap I will cut a whole fabric flap. I usually cut the body pieces of a fabric and then use scraps for creating the flap, or just make an artsy flap and find a fabric that will work well for the body.

I used whatever fabrics that I had for the lining pieces.

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