2015 CORONADO HISTORIC HOME TOUR

The City of Coronado was incorporated in 1890, and is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.  This Sunday, Mother's Day, is the Coronado Historic Home Tour.  The homes on the tour represent six of the styles of architecture that built Coronado.  Those on the tour include Mid-Century Modern, Palmer, Spanish Eclectic, Tudor, Craftsman and Spanish Revival.  

In addition to these six, there are five other (addresses provided in your ticket booklet for 'drive-by' touring) typical styles constructed here over the last 12 decades, and those are: Victorian, Mission Revival, Colonial Revival, Arts and Crafts and Pueblo Revival.

I have the great fortune of having done work in 3 of the 6 houses this year!  And in the picture above, the Tudor, I did the sofa slipcover to the left and the chair and ottoman in the center of the picture.  

Also, as seen above in the picture to the bottom left, in the living room, I made the pillows, and the bottom right shows the outside patio in the back of the house, where I did the cushions.  There are also various other window treatments, bedding, etc. that I have done over the last 10 or more years.

The other two homes I have work in are the Craftsman and the Spanish Eclectic.

If you live locally in San Diego, I highly recommend you come to Coronado on Sunday and enjoy the  exquisite homes on the tour.  The hours are 11 am to 4 pm, and tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 1100 Orange Avenue.  Check out the web site for more information:  www.coronadohistory.org.

PACIFIC BEACH CUSHIONS AND PILLOWS

This vintage rattan chair and ottoman got new covers!

I forgot to look at the selvage to see the mill and pattern name of this fabric.  Sorry about that.  I do know it is an outdoor fabric (but not Sunbrella) and so is pretty indestructible.

The pattern was fairly large, so to take advantage of all the different scenes, I did not match the seat, back and ottoman pieces.  Also, if you turn them over, they still do not match.  Fronts and backs are all different.  It was the only way to not completely waste fabric.

From the side

I also made a couple of covers for the throw pillows my client already had.

There are also two 19" x 16" pillows in a tweed-y fabric for the newly reupholstered vintage rattan sofa.  I did not take a close-up, so they are only visible to the far sides of the pictures.  Again, sorry about that.

My client wanted me to slipcover this piece, but what you cannot see is how impossible this would have been.  It actually folds out flat, kind of like a futon.  A slipcover would not have worked.

This is the fabric that was on it before and the temporary solution that we came up with 4 or 5 years ago to put off having the sofa recovered at that point.  I made a sort of 'slip' that tied on the sides.  We were not trying to hide the fact that it was a slip, just extending the life of the sofa.

It worked very well, but the time came to do it properly.  And my client's husband had always wanted a green sofa, which it finally is.

This home in Pacific Beach is my clients' winter home; that is, they are here in winter to get out of the cold and snow of Rhode Island.  

AN OLD FAVORITE - APPLIQUE

This pillow, actually there were 2, took me the entire day to make.

  Let me say right now that I cannot really draw, but I figured since an anchor is mostly straight lines, I should be able to do it successfully.  I did tell my client that if I thought it looked dorky, she would be getting solid black pillows.  So, first I had to draw an anchor big enough to fit on a 26" pillow.  Next step was to cut it out of the paper and trace it on fusible interfacing.  Then I had to iron the interfacing to the white Sunbrella; then cut those out; then do a satin stitch around the whole thing.  After all that, I then zigzagged the anchor to the fabric, and sewed the welting on, put the zipper in and finished the pillows.  Literally, the entire day to do this, and I only made $50 per pillow.  Still, I was quite happy with how they turned out, as was my client.  Next time, if there is a next time, I will charge accordingly.

EVEN MORE PILLOWS

Usually when I do a job through/for Cotier it is a custom order for a customer of the store and not for the store itself.  This time, however, I did all these pillows for display/to be sold in the store.

Most of the fabrics were left from other jobs, and instead of tossing them, the owner decided we should use them.

As I love to make pillows (seems obvious since I tend to post a lot of pillows!), this was a fun job.  It's also more interesting when there are just scraps of fabric available and more imagination and ingenuity are needed to make it happen.  Nothing like a challenge!

NEW PILLOWS FOR NEW SOFAS

Apparently coral is the new black.  

Very heavy fabric with very heavy cotton loop fringe meant using my industrial machine.  Luckily, I am no longer afraid of it.  When I first got it, well, that was a totally different story.  Now, I am just glad I have it when I get these fabrics that my regular machine could never sew on.

This embroidered coral (in coral) is a very popular fabric these days.

A herringbone (also in coral) with a tassel fringe.

The love seat, sofa and all the fabrics for the pillows are from Cotier here on Coronado.  The other pillows seen on the love seat are available from the store.

BLUE IRIS PILLOW

I have been sewing like crazy and this is about all I have to show for it!  And this was a birthday gift for a fellow yogini.  Several weeks back I posted pictures I was having printed onto fabric, and this is the only one I've made so far.

Of course, that's because I've been making so many other pillows that I am actually getting paid to make, that making my photo pillows is not a real priority.  I made 3 giant, and I do mean GIANT pillows today.  The down inserts are 30" x 30"!  The actual pillows were 34" square.  I also made 2 smaller pillows, which really aren't that small until you put them beside the jumbo ones.  They took 24" inserts and were 28" with the flange.  But I have no pictures of those.  They got picked up and delivered to their new home.  One of these days I am hoping to get photos of all the things I've made in the last 2 months.

PILLOWS GALORE!

I have been working with designer Cara Clancy here on Coronado for the last 6 weeks.  She has multiple jobs going at the same time, and because of this, I am making roman shades, slipcovers and pillows for 5 different houses, all at the same time.  The pictures below are of some of the 52 (!) pillows I've made so far.  This is basically the staging area for them before they get put in the appropriate house.  Once everything is in place, I'll be able to shoot pictures of the finished products where they belong.

SIMPLE PILLOW, BIG IMPACT

There was just a scrap of this fabric left, not even enough to do both the front and back, just enough for the front of the pillow.  And not enough of the solid linen I used on the back to do welting.  

And because I dislike installing invisible zippers (well, that WAS true until I got an invisible zipper foot for my machine, now they aren't so bad,) I did buttons.  I chose the abalone buttons from my vast collection. My client was happy and her love seat was happy.

A NOT-SO-SIMPLE PILLOW

Looks simple enough, but it wasn't.  Especially since I had never made a pillow like this.  First, I had to figure out how to do it.  So I googled 'double flanged pillow.'  I finally found an image, of a linen pillow, that made sense and I printed it, so I could continue to refer to it.

What made this more challenging was the fabrics--the main fabric is a wool and cashmere blend, not horribly heavy, but not as lightweight as linen; the pink tweed is also a heavier weight.  

The other challenge was the amount of fabric.  There was only exactly enough to make the pillow.  There were also 3 other pillows out of the wool/cashmere in a somewhat different style, what I call a fake flange.  The 'flange' was not a separate, mitered piece sewn to the body of the pillow.  It was just a larger than finished size that was then stitched 1 1/2" in from the outside edge, giving the illusion of a flange, when, in fact, it isn't a true flange.

Anyway, because I had never made a pillow like this, or even the other ones, it took far longer than it should have.  And though I do like the way it turned out, I won't mind if no one ever asks for this style again!

The designer has yet to see it, but I am sure she'll be happy.  

LARGE SILK PILLOWS

I made these Euro (26"x26") pillows for a client's daughter's master bedroom.  It is an embroidered silk.  The thing I've always noticed about these silk fabrics that have been embellished is how challenging they can be to work with.  Oh, they look beautiful in the store, but I think that whomever designed these fabrics has never had to sew on them.

Originally, my client wanted self-welting.  The problem with that on this particular fabric was the bulkiness that the bean-shaped, raised 'bumps' on the lines of embroidery presented.  Not only were they difficult to stitch through, they were not going to allow the welting to really work very well.  Since I cannot control where those bumps were, I needed an alternative.

I told my client this and asked if I could go to Home Fabrics and see if they had a brush fringe that would work.  She agreed, and off I went.  Luckily, they had one (on sale for $3/yard) that was perfect.  It brought out the variations of color in the embroidery thread and was a heck of a lot easier to deal with.  The pillows turned out lovely, and my client, and her daughter, loved the finished product, which made me happy.

MORE LILLY PULITZER PILLOWS

A pile of Lilly pillows!  I made 2 each of 22" and 20" and 1 - 18".  I liked the way they looked on top of each other, with the different ruffles showing.

Close-up of the ribbon that surrounds the 'picture.'

The buttons and ruffles matched

These were a little challenging to make since they were originally dresses.  I couldn't quite get a straight square because of the taper, but visually, it really isn't that apparent.

LILLY PULITZER, RESORT 2005

I made this pillow from a Lilly Pulitzer dress.   My client got these adorable dresses, for little girls, from Marshall's for a fraction of the original cost.  I wish they came in my size.  I would totally wear them all!

As you will see on the photos below, the appliqués  were too small to make a pillow without enlarging them somehow.  I accomplished this by cutting the white denim 20" x 20" and sewing the appliqué directly to it.  I could have done it by cutting pieces and then mitering the corners, but that seemed like too much work and I wanted to frame the image with a small trim.  In this case, I used a pink polka dot ribbon.  The 1" ruffle is also a Lilly Pulitzer fabric.

The back has covered buttons from the same fabric as the ruffle.

The pictures above are of the other dresses that still need to be made into pillows.  They are all so cute.  I can't wait to make the rest of them.

SLIPCOVERS AND PILLOWS FOR THE BEACH HOUSE

Two posts in a week!  What has come over me?  Well, I can't promise I will be posting twice a week on a regular basis.  I do, however, wish to be more consistent in posting.  That, I will promise to do.

On a trip to Laguna Beach, oh, 3 or 4 years ago, we came across this fabric.  It was very expensive and, though, lovely, not in the budget.  After returning to San Diego, I was in a local fabric store and they had it.  For $6 a yard!  The exact fabric.  I excitedly called my cousin and told her what I had stumbled upon and asked how much she wanted.  At this point there were 3 bolts of it.  She eventually decided on 25 yards.  She wasn't sure what she wanted to do with it, but wanted to make sure there was enough to do a couple chairs or a love seat.  I purchased the fabric and then a couple days later, she decided she wanted more.  I went back and there was nothing left. 

At that point, my cousins were living in Rancho Santa Fe.  They have since moved to Carlsbad and now have a house on the beach.  Finally, it was time to use the fabric with the khaki sea stars.  It turned out there was 26 yards with which to 'play.'  She decided on two chairs, both with ottomans.  That was going to barely be enough fabric for all 4 pieces.   The solution was to do a contrast welt and to make the skirts a little shorter than to the floor.  The chair above is in the master bedroom and, as you can see, the ocean is right outside the sliding glass doors!  Beautiful!

This is the back of the chair that is in the downstairs family room.

Front of chair with matching ottoman.

After the slipcovers were in place, and her giant white slipcovered sofas were delivered, it became apparent that throw pillows were needed.  The fabric was all gone, though.  So I started googling 'sea star fabric' and finally found it.  Further investigation revealed a navy blue one as well.  In the end, I made 15 pillows in the white/khaki and 11 in the navy.  I did a navy welt because there was half as much of that fabric and my cousin wanted the maximum number of pillows it was possible to get from the available yardage.  My car was literally full of pillows on Easter Sunday when I delivered them.

Closer up picture of the family room chair.