Sew Powerful Purses #400-401 (for 2025)

2 more purses made during the Sew Powerful Sew-a-thon. The purse on the left was a sweet panel that had a white background, which was too stark and could get dirty too quickly, so a sky blue crayon to the rescue! I colored the background with the crayon and heat set it. The panel was given to me by a dear friend a few years ago. I hope a girl who loves music receives this one.

The purse flap on the right was white scraps sewn together and quilted. Then I painted background green and painted the flower on top. I like the textures from the various prints showing through the paint.

I like this pretty pink fabric and made a few other purses with it too.

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Sew Powerful Purses #396-399 (for 2025)

4 more purses finished during the September Sew-a-thon for Sew Powerful.

I used 4 cup & saucer quilt blocks that I had to create the flaps. I made the 3rd cup & saucer from the left with the yellow/orange cup and words on it. The others were from a small group I belonged to that made and exchanged quilt blocks and I don't remember who made the other 3 blocks. I didn't have enough of those blocks to make a very large quilt and wasn't sure what to do with those blocks, so I turned them all into purse flaps. I have already shared some of them in other posts earlier too. I think they made nice purse flaps.

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Sew Powerful Purses #392-395 (for 2025)

4 more purses for Sew Powerful Purse Project. These were made in September during the Sew-a-thon. I had lots of scraps of denim from the jeans I upcycled, so I thought I would make some all scrappy purses. I did machine decorative stitches over the raw edges of the jeans that were placed next to each other. I didn't want thick seams to have to sew over later, so I didn't piece in the traditional way with seams (except I did sew seams on the far right purse flap I made). Appliqué flowers were added on 3 of the flaps.

All have pockets on the front, 2 are the jean pockets and the other 2 are scrappy stitched.

The backs are all scrappy stitched together, some more scrappy than others.

Sort of a Shabby Chic look. 

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Sew Powerful Purses #386-391 (for 2025)

I got these 6 purses made during the Sew-a-thon in September. I wanted to use up the beach vacation-like fabric for the purse bodies of 5 of these purses and include some of the scraps in the flap as well. It might be fun for the girls to receive purses like this since they live in Zambia, which is land locked and have not been to the sea or on a beach or seen sailboats, etc. in person.

I also had some flower appliqués I had cut out from a tie dye tank top to use as well.

The sailboats were fun to add to 2 flaps. While you cannot see it very well, those large white buttons on each flap have an anchor design on them.

Another Starbucks apron was upcycled for this purse.

An instant pocket from the apron pocket.

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Sew Powerful Purses #376-385 (for 2025)

10 purses made during the September Sew-a-thon for Sew Powerful Purse Project. I bought a quilt pattern at a quilt show over a year ago and used just the wool appliqué flowers and hand embroidery part of the pattern to make these 9 flaps. I added strips of fabrics around the handstitched sections to make the flap to the correct size. These took time to make, but I enjoy hand stitching, so I didn't mind. I also made one Southwest bear appliqué flap using the same blue exterior body fabric as the rest.

Some of the quilt blocks had little flowerpots, which you could buy little flowerpot buttons for extra if you wanted to add them. I decided to use some scraps of cork material for the flowerpots instead.

The flowerpot on the center purse I used a wooden thimble shaped button for the flowerpot. This is what I wanted to use for them all, and I thought I had several thimble buttons, but I only had one. The button came in a variety package of other sewing related themed buttons. The other button shapes I got 2-3 of each button, but only one thimble in the package. I couldn't find find any affordable thimble shaped buttons anywhere online, so chose to use the flowerpot template and cork to make the rest. The place that sold the pattern had flowerpot buttons, but the shipping would have cost me more than the buttons and the button were already quite pricey for such tiny buttons.

Southwest bear fetish flap.

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Sew Powerful Purses #362-375 (for 2025)

Happy October! I love the Autumn months with the cooler weather and pumpkins, the smell of pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon and other spices, the fall leaves in a variety of colors, and pinecones. I am not a huge Halloween fan, like most, but I do love seeing the various Halloween decorations around. I just prefer natural Autumn things. 

These 14 purses were made during the Sew-a-thon for Sew Powerful, which has now ended, but you can donate anytime in any amount year round as well. The Sew-a-thon was a success for me! I made 160 purses and received donations way above my goal, so thank you all for supporting me in my effort! The goal for Sew Powerful was not met, but they did receive quite a lot of donations. They received about 4/5ths of their goal. 

I shared one purse using this African mask fabric print recently, so here are the rest of them that I made using that fabric.

The flap lining here I had painted with a stencil awhile back. It was too light for the flap as it could get dirty too quickly, so I used this for the lining. The white fabrics were scraps I pieced together first and then stenciled with flowers. I like the stencil, so I need to find a better background fabric so I can use it on the exterior front next time.

I took this photo of a hot air balloon flying over my house on September 30th. This Saturday starts the annual Balloon Fiesta. The fiesta is a 9 day event in Albuquerque. I will be seeing lots of balloons of all shapes flying in the sky. I see balloons all year long, but the most is in October for the fiesta and during the cooler weather to get the lift the balloons need.

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Sew Powerful Purses #360-361 (for 2025)

These 2 purses were made with donated panels that I added scraps to make the flaps large enough. I used denim jeans for one purse.

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