Sew Powerful Purses #191-216 for 2022

Hello my beautiful sewers/sewists! Well the Sew Powerful Sew-a-thon is over! I am exhausted! I sewed 116 purses for the Sew-a-thon and a total of 216 purses for the entire year. Yes, I could still sew more purses the rest of this year before the year ends and I might do that, but I also need at least a month break from sewing them as I want to sew other things instead. You can check back here at the end of the year and see if I sewed more than 216 purses to donate to Sew Powerful.

These are the last purses I made for the September Sew-a-thon, which total another 26 purses. My final total for the Sew-a-thon is 116 purses made in September for Sew Powerful. During September, I also tested 3 bags for 2 designers, fell on the hard floor hurting my back (it's still sore) and took a couple days to rest from the fall. And I still made 116 purses during the month! 

I still need to work on the notecards that I made to include in each purse too. So I will do that this month so I can send off these purses. One woman in the Facebook group made over 200 purses! Wowzer!!! I feel like a slacker compared to that, but this wasn't a competition and I didn't really make a goal like some people did. I cut 113 kits in August and was hoping I would get all of those sewn and I did. I needed my September project for Crafter's Edge, so made a purse of course, using a hexagon die cut. I made 2 more with the hexagon die cuts (last 2 purses I made) on the last day of the Sew-a-thon. If I participate in the Sew-a-thon again next year, I will cut kits out months in advance so it won't be so overwhelming.

Here are the last 26 purses I made:

I made 2 more purses using the Hexagon die cut from Crafter's Edge for the African women/children fabric and sewed batik fabrics around the hexagons. The African fabric print and the coordinating print fabric that I used for the body of the purse were donated by Karen H. Thanks again Karen. I love how these came out!

I also want to thank all the people who donated in my name to Sew Powerful during this Sew-a-thon. You made a huge difference in the lives of these girls in Zambia. Together we are Sew Powerful! Thank you!

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Sew Powerful Purses #100-101, Plus 52 Purse Kits

Hello my lovely purse makers and purse admirers. I wanted to share my 2 latest Sew Powerful purses with you. I have now officially made over 100 purses for this year! Woohoo!!! 

The Sew Powerful Sew-A-Thon will start September 1-30. That means we don't sew until September, but we can cut out purse kits and have them ready to sew in Sept. So I have been cutting fabric and fusing interfacing and cutting webbing straps to create the purse kits and I clip each kit with a plastic colorful clothespin to keep each kit together. Then I stacked all 52 kits into a grocery sack. Yes, so far I have 52 kits ready to sew!!! I will continue to cut out more kits all month long. I may not finish sewing them all in September (in fact I have no idea how many I will complete), but that means I will have kits already to sew even past September.

Here are purses #100 &101 that I did sew before the Sew-A-Thon was announced at Sew Powerful.

Purses 100 & 101 I have completed this year. The left purse was made with denim jeans.

The back side. I added a slip pocket for each.

Here is what 52 purse kits in a grocery sack look like. I weighed the bag and it weighed 8 pounds 6.4 ounces. I didn't include any webbing straps in the kits or else the weight would be even more. I have my webbing cut and hanging up so I just grab the color strap I want for the purse when I am ready to sew the strap in.

Each kit is clipped together with a colorful plastic clothespin.

How many purses do you think I will sew during the month of September? Your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea, but I will be sewing every day at least a little sewing each day.

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Sew Powerful Purses for March 2021 (1-6)

These are the purses that I have made so far in March this year (2021) for Sew Powerful Purse Project. I am still using up some miscellaneous quilt blocks that I made a while ago and I added more strips to make it larger enough for the flaps. I added applique to some of the flaps too.

I have 10 more purses all cut out and ready to sew. Once those are made, I can cut up more purse kits and sew them when I have time. Even though I am using up a lot of my fabric, I still don't see the pile of fabric shrinking down very fast. But the scraps are piling up again, so that means even more scrappy flaps or bag exteriors lol!!

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Scrappy Little Fabric Totes

I made these scrappy bags quite a while ago. Wanting to use up some of the never-ending fabric scraps, I thought making these bags would help reduce the pile of scraps (they didn't reduce it much at all). I made these to give to the first 10 people who had signed up for the Selvage Class I taught over a year ago. I put their selvage kit for the class into these bags.

Using fabric strips of all widths I had on hand, I sewed the exterior of the bags.

I sewed a little button on the front that says Handmade.

On this one I sewed buttons on the handles to the bag, instead of sewing the handles into the bag.

I added a contrast strip at the top on this bag.

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