Custom cushions for Virginia colonials, porches and Tidewater homes

Salt in Norfolk, heat in Richmond, frost on the Blue Ridge

Virginia is three climates laid side by side, and a cushion notices every one.

In Tidewater, Norfolk averages 49.18 in (125 cm) of rain over 117 wet days and 34 days at 90°F (32°C) or above. July and August are its wettest months, about 6 in (15 cm) each, right in porch season. Salt spray is heaviest in the first 300 to 3,000 ft (90 to 900 m) from the waves, and faster corrosion has been measured 5 to 10 miles inland, so porch zippers earn a freshwater rinse.

Richmond runs hotter: 44 days at 90°F or above, with August and September mornings at 87 to 88% humidity. Roanoke, on the Blue Ridge side, gets 84 freezing nights and about 15 in (38 cm) of snow. Northern Virginia sits close to DC: 36 hot days, 67 freezing nights.

So damp, not sun, is the everyday enemy. The EPA gives a wet material 24 to 48 hours to dry before mold is likely.

Walls a foot thick, and the window seat inside them

Colonial brick houses were built with solid masonry walls, commonly 12 to 18 in (30 to 46 cm) thick. Where a window cut through, it left a deep opening called an embrasure, often splayed wider toward the room, with interior shutters tucked into the wall's depth. Sew for one and you are fitting a box with three walls and trim on every edge.

So I measure the reveal, not the sill board: front edge wall to wall, back edge against the glass, the depth at both ends, and every bit of casing that pokes in. A splayed reveal makes the cushion a trapezoid. Where trim overhangs the seat, a notched back edge lets the cushion sit flat; the notch pattern draws it with three numbers per notch.

Alexandria keeps its own oddity. Old Town was laid out in 1749, and its flounder houses have a single-slope roof with the tallest wall left blank: no windows, no doors. The town may have had about 1,500 of them in the 19th century and perhaps 75 by 1960. With so few windows, each one matters. Start with window seat cushions and the measuring pattern.

A Fan District kitchen, a Virginia Beach porch

Richmond's Fan District filled in from the Civil War to about 1920, 228 acres of Italianate, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival houses, known for one of the longest intact stretches of Victorian architecture in the country. Rowhouse kitchens run long and narrow, so the table goes against the wall and the wall gets a banquette. Start with the table, not the bench: the cushion top should sit 10 to 12 in (25 to 30 cm) below the tabletop, usually on 2 to 3 in (5 to 7.5 cm) of firm foam. The table-height pattern has the chart.

The porch is Virginia's other room. In the South Atlantic census division, which includes Virginia, 74% of new homes started in 2024 had one. At the beach, the 37th Street cottages, Craftsman houses built between 1913 and 1928, are a rare survivor of the single-family cottages that once defined the Virginia Beach resort. On porches like theirs, and on Shenandoah farmhouse porches, I sew in water-repellent outdoor fabric even under a roof.

A word on color, dear. Red brick, white trim and heart pine already say plenty, so let one quiet stripe or a solid with a single straight welt answer them: ticking indoors, an outdoor stripe on the porch. The wider region lives on our Mid-Atlantic and Maryland pages.