Rainy Day Book — Sew Mariana

Happy Saturday!!!

Today is my stop on the Rainy Day Sewing Blog Tour! The book is by Amy Sinibaldi and Kristyne Czepuryk for Tuva Publishing. It’s a book to get inspired, with beautiful photography and all different kinds of projects, from a softie mouse or cute cross-stitch to an entire quilt.

After enjoying flipping through all the pages, I went with the Portfolio Tote. I love sewing triangles not to mention I never travel without my big sketch book and my iPad, so it seemed like the perfect project for me.

I love linen, the timeless and classic look of it, so I decided on a grey one for the base of my tote, so it’ll look nice and clean for a long time. Then I grabbed a bright color palette for the triangles, a low volume print for the lining and a beautiful saturated Liberty lawn for the binding as a nice finishing touch.

After I chose my fabrics, I starched them well and started cutting my triangles. (You have to make a little adjustment to the template provided on the book: it needs to be 3” high, so all you have to do is extend the two diagonal lines as shown on the diagram below, and you are all set. Easy fix!)

I tried different arrangements, I couldn’t decide between an organized pattern or one more random, so I did one for each side.

I sewed my triangles in pairs, then in rows, and finally the rows together to complete my panel. (If you want more detail, I wrote a tutorial here).

After I had my patchwork panels ready, and since I used different weight fabrics, I added a light weight stabilizer to the back to help the panels stay flat.