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 Purses #186 & 187 (2024)

2 more purses made to donate to Sew Powerful Purse Project. I used selvages to make these purses and I added an appliqué flower on each flap too. 

I love using selvages and trying different ways to sew them. I started with the appliqué wool flower for the center and used selvages to surround the flower.

Back of purse with slip pocket and top of selvage flap.

This flap has a different shaped flower and it's smaller too. I used Woolies Flannel

 for the flower and I think a felted wool for the center (if I remember correctly).

Upcycled denim jeans, so the denim pockets add a couple more pockets on the front.

I made the back slip denim pocket from 2 jeans.

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Sew Powerful Purses #91-102 for 2023

I completed 12 more purses for the Sew-a-thon (SAT) 2023. I used selvages on some and upcycled denim jeans on others. It's a great feeling to create something useful, nice looking, upcycle and use selvages that most people would throw away! Those selvages do make sturdy purse flaps too.

This was fabric donated to me. I love those large flowers and using certain fabric prints I just want to use the whole thing as a flap instead of sewing scraps to create the flap. This is one where the flap fabric by itself is perfect.

Here are two flaps made using selvages. I love experimenting with how I will sew the selvages. The one on the left I started with the hexagon scrap of a child and sewed selvages around it. The one on the right was a simple diagonally laid out pattern of selvages.

3 more selvage flaps, set in different ways.

Another 2 selvage flaps, but these have upcycled denim bodies.

I used the front pocket on the back side of one and added a denim pocket with the heart I appliquéd on to the back of the other one.

One scrappy flappy and one selvage flap, both with denim bodies from upcycled jeans.

2 more scrappy flappies with upcycled denim jean bodies. The one on the right was made from a donated Friendship Star quilt block in batik fabrics that I placed on point and then sewed fabric around it, and then I cut it to shape. 

The back side of the last 2 purses with the front pockets from denim jeans to create pockets on the back of these purses. Such fun to have a little surprise pocket like this on the back and it's useful too!

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Sew Powerful Purses #18-26 (2023) & Say What? Blog Hop

Thank you Joan for hosting this Say What? Sew it-Show it Blog Hop. I knew what I was going to share right away (even though I needed to finish sewing them first, lol). 

Most of you know I love making bags/purses and I am passionate about making and donating purses to the Sew Powerful Purse Project, which is a charity that sends the purses to Zambia and fills them with feminine hygiene products (that are made by seamstresses right there in Zambia and they get paid a living wage too). This enables the girls to stay in school all month/year long so they do not miss school anymore. That in turns enables the girls to continue with their education and allows local women to sew the reusable pads and to make soap that is needed for the girls. All those items (plus a couple of pair of underwear that is outsourced because the cost is less than making the underwear) is placed into each purse and handed out to the girls at the various schools in Zambia. This is an ongoing need forever. 

So with that in mind, here are the purses that I made to donate with words on them. I used selvages for a lot of the purses, I also used a fabric panel that had lots of lovely Positive quotes on them, which is perfect for these purses too. The fabric panel has about half of just flowers as well as half with just quotes. Here is the panel I used:

Choose to Shine designed by Cherry Guidry

(I am also making flower flaps for the purses I am sewing now too).

I added strips around the panel quote to bring it up to the size needed for the flap. I added a handmade label and some embellishments too.

The main body of the purse and the lining can be seen here.

There is a front pocket on each purse. I like to make the Intermediate purse using the Beginner style flap as I can be more creative on the larger space on this flap. Flaps are interchangeable between the Beginner (boxed corner style) and the Intermediate (full gusset style) purses.

I took this photo when we had snow one morning.

I like to experiment with how I sew on the buttons I use for embellishing the purses too.

Next I made several purses using selvages. I like to play around with different settings for the selvages. I had a large scrap of that pink-blue-green-orange-white print, but not enough to make much out of, so I used it as the center of the flaps and because the colors in that print were also the colors in the main body of the purse, which is a fine wale corduroy print. I grabbed that corduroy print from a freebie table at my quilt group. The other fabrics used in these purses were fabrics that were directly donated to me by a couple of women from the Sew Powerful FB group.

I thought the corduroy print in the crazy quilt print made a great purse body. Soft, yet sturdy material.

Four more purses with that colorful print and selvages set in various ways.

All using the same body corduroy print fabric.

I made a slip pocket on the back sides of all the purses like this.

Check out the other bloggers too!

Monday April 17

MooseStashQuilting

Selina Quilts

Quilt Schmilt

Patchouli Moon Studio (me)

That Fabric Feeling

Scrapdash

 

Tuesday April 18

Inflorescence

Creatin' in the Sticks

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Just Because Quilts

BeaQuilter

Joyful Quilter

 

Wednesday April 19

 

Quilting Gail

Voormans Quilts

Quilted Delights

The Quilted Snail

Ms P Designs USA

Kathy's Kwilts and More

 

Thursday April 20

 

Just Let Me Quilt

Karrins Crazy World

crazy'boutquilts

Pinker n' Punkin Quilting

Songbird Designs

Days Filled With Joy

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Selvage Tote Bag (MIY Tote)

Here is another MIY Tote that I made using selvages and a faux cork fabric print. I love using selvages  and this tote was a perfect way to use some of them.

This tote measures 15" wide x 13" high x 3 1/4" deep.

The gold selvage in the middle called, Uncorked, is the same fabric I used for the bottom and handles, only in a black colorway.

Slip pockets on both sides of the bag.

Slip pockets with a few pen (or knitting needle) divisions.

The back side with more selvages!

Listed for sale in my PayHip Shop.  This bag has SOLD!

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Selvage Cross Body Bag

In April I was selling my bags at my quilt group's annual outdoor quilt show. A quilting friend saw a bag I made out of selvages (The Emma Bag) and she saw another bag (Serendipity Hip with a straight across top) and she asked me if I could make the Serendipity Hip bag, but with selvages. Of course I can. I emailed her photos of the original Serendipity Hip bag I made with the rounded top because I wanted to see if she preferred the rounded top or the straight top. She wanted the straight top. So I started making the selvage bag she requested.

It turned out really cute, even if I do say so. The bag is accented with black strap, strap tabs and bottom. I chose a nice color for the lining that went well with the selvages and even showed a peek of that fabric on the front of the bag as well.

This bag did get rather thick in places to sew with the selvages, and fleece, but my Brother PQ 1500S can handle those thick layers with ease.

Here she is:

After sewing on the accent bottom, my last selvage strip hardly showed. All you could see was a tiny bit of white and the white from the selvage strip above made a large white space there. So tiny buttons to the rescue! I sewed on these colorful tiny buttons here on the front and the back of the bag. The buttons look a bit like the round dots on some selvages indication the colors used in the fabric, so I thought it was a perfect addition.

Side of the bag. Also my handmade charm for the zipper pull.

Other side of the bag.

Inside the front pocket is a phone pocket within a larger slip pocket. This is located below the outside zipper pocket.

Back of the bag.

Closer look a the back. 

Inside I added the credit card pockets one side.

The other side of the lining has a zippered pocket. The instructions have you place the credit card pockets just under the zippered pocket, but I thought that made it a bit awkward to use, so I placed this pocket by itself and lowered it down a bit on the opposite side of the bag.

I am delivering this bag today to my friend. I sent her photos already and she said she loved it.
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