Coral & Tusk Builds a Bed!!

After our amazing team Wyoming adventure, we wanted to share Coral & Tusk’s new Outpost and exciting new fabrics and upholstered pieces with the rest of the West at the Western Design Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming! This 4 day conference is an incredible exhibit of furniture makers, fashion design, and an amazing large scale Designer Show House where interior designers and architects create individual rooms of a house, all within the conference space. Wanting to venture into more upholstery and debut new ways to use our embroidered fabric by the yard, we really wanted some “WOW” factor for the booth! Designer and owner Stephanie Housley got inspired by the gorgeous master bedroom makeover that Emily Henderson designed where she used Rebecca Atwood’s marbled fabric to upholster her bed in. We decided to tackle this gargantuan upholstery project and since we have an amazing builder on the team, our Director of Operations Aggie Armstrong, we enlisted her to make the wood structure base along with other structures to hold our fabrics and pillows for the conference. The amount of upholstering knowledge we had done between was minuscule, and did we mention the 3 day time frame we had to accomplish it?

At left, our original inspiration from Emily Henderson of a wrap-around cushy headboard and footboard.

Left: Stephanie’s work studio. Right: Aggie measuring and scheming. For the bed, Stephanie had a vision of what she wanted in her home to be able to use after the Western Design Conference, a versatile yet striking combination of our Quill Slate Striae Linen and a new custom colorway, Quill Fog Striae Linen. This combo is a perfect starting point for layering many of our bedding and pillow options.

Left: The custom Quill Fog Striae Linen colorway next to the Quill Slate Striae Linen. Shown on right: Lynsey, who heads the Fabric Division wanted to sew these fabrics together to look engineered in a perfect mirror, so straight pins were key!!

Left: Sewing the big pieces for the headboard and footboard. Right: Coming together!!

Here’s Aggie with the bed frame completed! Now we’ll take this apart to upholster each section piece by piece with the fabric we’ve just sewn together.

To upholster the bed frame, we took apart the structure and started on smaller sections. We wrapped layers of 2” foam and batting around the wood structure of the footboard. We wanted a luxe, plush look for the bed and layering the foam and batting helped create a smooth finish.

After securing the foam and batting (an electric staple gun was our best friend!) we wrapped the pressed fabric around the footboard and cut off any excess fabric to eliminate bulkiness. Stephanie is an expert at cutting a straight line along the grain of the fabric!!

We were encouraged to take breaks and enjoy the fresh air and that view!!!

After A LOT of patience and time, it’s starting to actually look like a bed!! The headboard is aligned and the wrap-around side panels were attached after upholstering. The side panels are the only pieces left! We were all so exhausted at this point but got a second wind knowing how close we were to finishing.

All the pieces coming together!! We just need to pop in some slats and see how the mattress looks on top!

Woooo, we made it to install day!! We love that graphic pop with the mirrored Slate and Fog Quill.

Since this is the Western Design Conference, and the colors fit so perfectly, we chose to go with a feather blowout! Our embroidered all over Plumes Yardage was made into a king duvet cover, and from front to back, we have our Feathers Lumbar, Ridgeline Slate 20”, Pheasant Feather left and right, and Sweetgrass Pyrite 26” between two Plumes 26” pillows. Stephanie had these beautiful mirrored pendants by Robert Ogden from John Derian that she mounted on salvaged wood with brackets to hang above the bed. We stretched our custom embroidered, appliqued and hand cut tapestry onto a frame to be the focal art piece.

The completely finished display with our hand crafted bed, custom duvet and pillows, and shown in front are our Cats and Dogs pillows along with our versatile Habitats and Plumes feather bed rolls.

Left: Close up view of the pillows against the Quill headboard. Right: WDC booth display

Interior Designer Christopher Kennedy also included Coral & Tusk in his Show House room! Kennedy designed the parlor room and we were thrilled to play a part in it. Above top left is the modern scheme and color palette for the room. Top right: our Pinnacle Pyrite Slate lumbar against Hunt Slonem’s graphic Bunnies painting. Bottom: pillows from front to back, our Pinnacle Pyrite Slate lumbar, Sweetgrass Onyx Lumbar, 20” Riverbed Onyx and two pieces of 26” in Sidewinder Slate.

Going on at the same time as the Western Design Conference was the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival where we had a booth on the square at the open-air, juried art fair, Takin’ It To the Streets. We had a 10’ x 10’ booth space and wanted to build a renaissance style market stall where we could add shelving and more custom built fixtures for the product display.

It happened to be a particularly windy week while this was going on, so the wood squares acted as anchor points to put weight on top of so the tent wouldn’t blow away! The custom shelves were specifically made to house our various sized pillows.

Our market tent held up to the strong winds and made our products look good at the same time! We absolutely loved being part of the Western Design Conference and the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival and meeting so many amazing designers, makers and Coral & Tusk enthusiasts!!