Flying High in the Sky in a Hot Air Balloon; Flag Pennant That Is

Hello hot air balloon aficionados, I am here to share my latest project using Crafter's Edge die cuts and the Crossover II die cut machine, also by Crafter's Edge. I used the Flag Pennant die cuts, the Letter die cuts, the Nested Clouds die cuts and then added 3 appliqué hot air balloons. With the annual International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico starting the first Saturday in October (and lasting 9 days), I wanted to create something for the occasion. 

What word(s) should I use? Well I wasn't sure and just thought, "Flying High" seemed suitable. Well that meant 13 pennant pieces and 10 letters, which when completed stretched out quite a ways and I didn't know how I was going to photograph this. So I have a couple of magnetic hooks and I just put them on the garage door and hooked the pennant to that. I stood back quite far in order to get the entire pennant in the photo. Then I took closer shots of the letters and hot air balloons.

The Flying High Flag Pennant with hot air balloons.

Closer look at a part of the flag pennant.

I used cotton fabric for the inside smaller flag pennant, the letters and the hot air balloons and clouds, and the pale yellow larger flag pennant is felt. I also backed each flag pennant with another piece of felt.

I love how using a couple of the Nested Cloud die cuts added to the hot air balloon

 look.

Thanks to the die cuts I used from Crafter's Edge, the cutting was a breeze. Get it? Flying high, breeze? LOL!!! Okay I am being a bit punchy this morning.

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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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Helping to Raise Funds for Sew Powerful Purse Project

Hello my sweet & generous readers, I just wanted to let you know about a fund raiser for Sew Powerful and their Purse Project. 

A purse I made not long ago.

I am involved in a very meaningful project and I am very excited to tell you about it. For the entire month of September, I will be sewing purses for girls in Zambia as a part of the 2022 Sew Powerful Sew-a-Thon. The purses I make, along with thousands of others, will travel to Zambia where they will be filled with soap, underwear, and reusable feminine hygiene pads for schoolgirls in impoverished communities. Having access to these pads (a hard-to-get resource in Zambia) allows the girls to attend school all month long. This greatly impacts a girl’s academic performance, giving her a chance to break the cycle of poverty with a quality education. The pads are sewn by Zambian seamstresses trained and employed by Sew Powerful, providing good paying jobs and the dignity of work for these women. This is a life-changing blessing for both the seamstresses and the girls in a country where so many struggle to escape the effects of extreme poverty.

Here is where you come in:

Would you consider making a one-time donation, in any amount, to Sew Powerful in consideration of my effort? Proceeds from the 2022 Sew-a-Thon help to fill the purses for the girls and pay our dedicated Zambian seamstresses.

A donation is easy to make. Just click the link below, select my name from a drop-down list of Sew Powerful Sew-a-Thon participants, and make a donation. It’s as simple as that to change the lives of women and girls in Zambia.

Click HERE to support me in the Sew-A-Thon.

Thank you for your consideration and say a little prayer for me as I sew away in September!

Warmly,

Daryl Perry

P.S. Even a one dollar donation will help this effort as it all adds up. Thank you so much!

Please see ALL the purses I have made since December 2020, by clicking the Sew Powerful Purse Project tab at the top of the screen. Newest purses are posted on the top.

Another purse I made recently.

Hugs,

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2 UFO Quilt Blocks Become One New Project

Hello friendly aliens near & far, welcome to my day on the UFO Blog Hop. Thanks Joan (of Moosestash Quilting) for hosting this Far Out blog hop. 

I knew I had a lot of UFO's (the unfinished objects kind) that needed to get finished and a blog hop is a great nudge to get er done. So I grabbed the UFO that didn't need too much finishing to add and I finished it. 

I made 6 of the 9 Retro Flash Blocks when they first came out on Suzy's Artsy-Craftsy Sitcom. (I still haven't made the BBQ guy and the Poodle Skirt and the Gasoline ones). I loved making these blocks, but wall space is very limited in my house to hang up quilts, so I thought about what I could do with some of the blocks I had already made and I decided to make a desktop computer screen dust cover. I knew I needed a cover as my screen gets very dusty! So the only blocks that would work were the ones that were set horizontally, as the vertical ones would be too tall. 

I made this computer screen dust cover 2-sided and added a handle in the center to grab onto it easily. It could also work to make a sewing machine cover like this as well, but I already have plenty of sewing machine covers that I have made over the years. 

Here is my computer screen dust cover:

These are two blocks joined together with sashing in between the blocks and borders and I added a handle for easy grabbing.

The Bowling block.

The Drive In Movie Block. (Oh drive in movies were so fun in the summer evenings in California)!

I placed this on the back of an outdoor chair so you can get the idea how it works on my computer screen. The chair back is slightly curved though.

And the other side over the chair.

Lighting isn't as good inside, but here it is over my computer screen.

And the other side over the computer screen. Don't you love my purple keyboard and mouse? When I saw they made these some in colors and with white keys, I had to get it because my all black keyboard had lots of the letters worn off from so much typing, lol! Plus black with gold letters on black keys was hard to see (and boring too). I love how easy this keyboard is to see all the letters, numbers and symbols and the keys to type on are quiet as well as easier to type. So a win-win-win! Amazon sells them (not an affiliate) if you are interested. I also like the shorter keyboard (doesn't have the separate number on the right side), so it is more compact and fits better on my table.

Now please go visit the other bloggers to see what UFO projects they all came up with.

Here is the complete blog hop list:

Monday July 25:

Just Let Me Quilt

Lianne Makes Stuff

Karrin’s Crazy World

Ms P Designs USA

Time4Stitchn

Scrapdash

Tuesday July 26:

Creatin' in the Sticks

Quilted Delights

Days Filled With Joy

Kathys Kwilts and More

Food For Thought

Wednesday July 27:

Stitching Farm Girl

BeaQuilter

SelinaQuilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilt Doodle Designs

Quilting Gail

Thursday July 28:

Patchouli Moon Studio (hello lovelies it's me)

Quilt Schmilt

Lynns Blog

Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel

Home Sewn by Us

Quilting Gail

Friday July 29:

Homespun Hannah's Blog

Inflorescence

Words & Stitches

Just Sew Quilter

MooseStashQuilting

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UFO Blog Hop Starts today!

Brought to you by Joan of Moosestash Quilting.

Monday July 25:

Just Let Me Quilt

Lianne Makes Stuff

Karrin’s Crazy World

Ms P Designs USA

Time4Stitchn

Scrapdash

Tuesday July 26:

Creatin' in the Sticks

Quilted Delights

Days Filled With Joy

Kathys Kwilts and More

Food For Thought

Wednesday July 27:

Stitching Farm Girl

BeaQuilter

SelinaQuilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilt Doodle Designs

Quilting Gail

Thursday July 28:

Patchouli Moon Studio (hello lovelies it's me)

Quilt Schmilt

Lynns Blog

Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel

Home Sewn by Us

Quilting Gail

Friday July 29:

Homespun Hannah's Blog

Inflorescence

Words & Stitches

Just Sew Quilter

MooseStashQuilting

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33 Doll Quilts + 14 More= 47 Doll Quilts Made!

Hello dolly! I made these doll quilts to donate to my quilt group who teams with the woodworkers who make doll beds. Each Christmas they give a simple doll, a wooden doll bed and a handmade doll quilt to young girls (and a wooden toy of some kind to the boys). 

I wanted to use up the mountains of scraps I had, so I just made free form or crumb quilts, crazy quilt style and used up UFO blocks too by adding a few strips to them. I made 33 quilts. But then before I went to the quilt group to deliver these, I had time to make another 14 more, so ended up giving them 47 doll quilts in all. Also, I gave a  handmade doll I had and a stuffed sheep in case they could give that to one of the children.

Stack of 33 doll quilts.

These were quilt blocks to begin with and I added strips to make them larger.

More 9-patch quilt blocks with added strips.

A stack of crazy quilt style doll quilts.

Crazy quilt doll quilts, using up my yellow and orange fabric scraps.

More yellow and orange scraps made crazy quilt style.

As usual, barely made a dent in my scraps! But these all went to a worthy cause, so that should make some kids happy.

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Life's a Kick on Route 66: Panel Quilt

Hello lovely people. Have you ever gotten your kicks on Route 66? Well I must say I got a kick out of making this panel quilt and giving it a fun punch by adding the 8 state names (that Route 66 passes through) all around the panel using the Crafter's Edge Alphabet die cuts not only made the cutting of the letters fast and easy, but they look fabulous too! 

My good friend bought 2 of these Life's a Kick on Route 66 fabric panels; one for each of us. She wanted me to come up and idea of what to do around the panel. The panel sat marinating in my mind for about 9 months! I had some ideas, like make a Twister border or partial border around the panel, but nothing really sounded that great or looked good in my mind. 

Meanwhile, I applied again to be on the Crafter's Edge Design team and got accepted again, yay! So I knew I wanted Alphabet die cuts in order to create this panel using the 8 states along Route 66. I didn't plan all the math, just figured the names would fit. Well, when laying out the state names around the panel onto the black border, no matter how I configured the names they wouldn't all fit! So that's when I decided to make 2 of the states in smaller sizes. It worked! So 6 state names were made with Crafter's Edge Alphabet die cuts, and 2 were not. It adds more interest to the quilt, right? LOL!

I was born in one of these states, grew up in another of these states and have lived in New Mexico for almost 1/4 of a century! Yikes that sounds longer than saying 2 1/2 decades.

My Life's a Kick on Route 66 panel quilt with the 8 states that are along Route 66.

Had to use smaller alphabet letters to fit the big state of Texas onto the border of the quilt. 

The Land of Enchantment is home to me and the place I have lived longer than anywhere else in my life (and I moved a lot).

After living in The Beaver State (Oregon) for a few years when we moved from MO, I grew up in The Sunshine State (California). Didn't leave CA until I was in my early 20's.

I was born in the Show Me state, but moved when I was a toddler so I don't remember anything.

The Crossover II Fabric & Paper Cutting System.

I used the various die cut letters that I needed to create this quilt, from letter A to...

...to letter Z.

Thanks Crafter's Edge for making it so much easier and faster to cut out all those letters! I still have the letters for Texas and Illinois cut out of the larger Crafter's Edge Alphabet die cuts, so I might be using those letters for another project one day.

Now as for my friend, I showed her this finished quilt and she loved it, but I have no idea if she will want to do the same thing around her quilt panel or not? I guess I will wait and see what she decides to do. Tara, if you want the bigger letters I already cut out of the states of Texas and Illinois, I can give those to you if you want them. Let me know.

Happy die cutting, sewing, appliqué and quilting!

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