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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How to Turn Your Child or Grandchild's Art Into a Treasured Quilt

I wrote a tutorial that is free on Craftsy, about how to paint on fabric with crayon pastels. (See sidebar with my Craftsy patterns). I wanted to share another thing that you can do after learning how to paint on fabric and that is to preserve some of your children or grandchildren's art by turning it into a quilt.

First, take a drawing from a child and enlarge it if desired. Follow the instructions from my tutorial on how to paint the fabric. You can paint the entire quilt, or make fabric appliques for some of the larger pieces if you desire. Stitch the appliques in place using any stitch that you desire, or wait until you are ready to quilt the piece and just quilt the appliques in place.

My grandson loves books my author Mo Willems, especially the pigeon series. He is always drawing pigeons in the style of Mo Willems without even looking at the book. He was at my house the other day and grabbed a paper and pencil and drew this pigeon:

I enlarged this drawing my grandson drew in order to create the quilt.

He also drew this drawing that my daughter had on her refrigerator. I asked to borrow it so I could scan the drawing and enlarge it a bit in order to create another quilt.

After you have appliqued (if desired) and painted your child's drawing onto fabric, then just layer with batting and backing and quilt as desired. Add a binding to the quilt and a hanging sleeve on the back. Or you can finish the quilt any way you desire if you don't want to bind it, you can sew it pillow style and turn it right-sides-out and press and then quilt so you don't need a binding. Embellish the quilt as desired. Below is my grandson's pigeon drawing that I turned into a quilt.

And don't forget to include a label for your quilt giving the child full credit for the drawing, including the date it was drawn.

I hope you have fun making a child's precious drawing into a quilt so that the parents and child can treasure it for many years to come. I hope my grandson will hang this quilt in the room of his child some day and then tell his child the story behind how it was made. Enjoy!

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Painted Flower Quilts

I took some photos of a Sunflower and some Cosmos flowers when I was in Sisters, Oregon in July for the annual quilt show there. I used Picasa program and turned the photos into a black and white sketch. I then printed them onto fabric. You really need an inkjet printer to do this, but I still printed mine using my laser printer. I traced the basic lines of the flowers with a pigma pen because the laser printer is not permanent on fabric and the printed lines aren't very dark. Once I had the lines drawn in, I used Caran d'Ache Neocolor 2 Artist Crayons to color and then paint the flowers. The laser printer made the colors look dull, that's why an inkjet printer works better. After they dried I heat set with an iron and then quilted these small quilts.

This is the photo I took of the sunflower.

Sunflower.

This is the photo I took of the Cosmos flowers.

Cosmos quilt.

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