As a thank you for our Hermosa Beach hosts, Red painted a few rooms and I did some sewing. We went downtown to my favorite fabric shop, Michael Levine, and found some fabulous material for an l-shaped bench seat and some cushions for the roof top deck. If you’re in Los Angeles with a sewing project, this shop is the one to head for because of it’s broad range and good prices (and there’s usually lots of fabric on sale). It’s smack-bang in the middle of the garment district and this is where I shopped for fabric when I re-covered my ugly couches.
I borrowed a sewing machine from a neighbor. It was the machine her grandmother gave her when she was at college (and now she’s the mother of college age kids herself) so it was a bit temperamental, but it just needed some TLC and patience to get it to work right.
I transformed a bedroom into my new sewing room and it took me a couple of days to run up the three throw cushions and two bench seat box cushions.
The first box cushion was more challenging, because I didn’t use a pattern and I needed to experiment with fit to make sure it wasn’t baggy when it was fitted over the foam.
We did good at choosing the fabric as it coordinated with the existing pillows, but I spent quite a bit of time making sure the horizontal pattern was sewn straight. I played around with how to arrange the fabric, and settled on aligning the square pattern on the edges that faced out.
I love the process of trying to figure out the best way to make soft furnishings, and had Red on hand to cut my seat foam to size. (You’d think that the carpenters would have created a standard width seat, but no.)
I made a short transformation video when I replaced the old throw blanket being used, and installed my seat cushions (which, by the way, fit the space like a glove).
We’d chosen some turquoise fabric for the oversized cushions, and I love the coastal colors and design on these. The color was actually a perfect compliment to the walls of my sewing room, but these were destined for the roof deck seating area.
I miss my own sewing machine (I donated it to an after school program when we moved from LA) and wish I had a sewing machine in Turkey. But at least my Mum has one I can borrow when I got home.
Fun project and a wonderful gift for your hosts! I’ll bet they were thrilled.
They were Nancy … and I was thrilled that the base cushions fit the space exactly. Nothing worse that having to redo and unpick to make revisions.
I like those cushions – both the coastal colored ones and the other white and blue ones! I am sure your hosts were happy. Being able to cut foam and sew cushions is not only creative but an impressive skill.
Thanks Jan .. I love sewing, and was so bummed when I couldn’t take my sewing machine with me when I left Los Angeles. But now I’m volunteering in France one of my projects is to make some more cushions and cover more foam to make a seat pad, so I’m excited to work on that.
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