Corki’s Embroidery closing after almost 60 years of personalizing gear and garments for the Newport Beach community
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Corki’s Embroidery took on a lot of custom jobs the other half-dozen or so other shops in the Newport Beach area wouldn’t, which meant that over the years the business had many clients approach them with special orders carrying deep sentimental value.
Employees recall one woman who came in carrying the wedding tuxedo of her husband, who had died at a young age.
“She wanted this inscription that we made inside the coat so he would be buried with her thoughts, that they would meet again. Stuff like that comes through the door, and you just sort of, ‘Oof!’” seamstress Linda Pierce exclaimed. “Yes, of course we’ll do it!”
Other memorable jobs were blankets customized with the names of children cared for by an orphanage and the sewing of American flags onto to the gear of beach volleyball pros April Ross and Jen Kessy ahead of their silver medal finish in the 2012 Olympics.
Their work has helped people commemorate weddings, graduations, as well as countless other special moments and people over the course of their decades in business.
Owner Barbara “Corki” Rawlings told the Daily Pilot she has reveled in her role in the Newport Beach community. After celebrating her 90th birthday in 2024 and running her shop for 59 years, she’s decided to close it at the end of June and settle into retirement.
But that doesn’t mean she’s done sewing. She’ll move her favorite vintage Singer 401A Slant-O-Matic from the store workshop to her desk at home alongside three other similar machines, she said.
Rawlings has sold the building tucked away on Old Newport Boulevard she had been doing business out of. The commercial sized machine they used for high-volume orders will pass into the ownership of another local seamstress.
“I thought maybe somebody would buy the property and allow me to stay for a couple years while they’re getting permits for tearing it down,” Rawlings said. “And when I turned 90, I guess I just thought, ‘Why?’ And for me it was the right decision. No regrets.”
Long running thread
Sewing is something threaded into the core of the business owner’s upbringing. Some of Rawlings’ earliest memories involved making garments “at my mother’s knee.”
“I worked the pedals on her sewing machine,” she said. “She made all our kids’ clothes. I made all my kids’ clothes, drapes, everything.”
Her mother was a teacher who eventually settled in Santa Ana. Through sewing and living in Orange County, Rawlings became involved in the boating community.
She used to help the original owner of Nikki’s Flags with orders for many of the yacht clubs in the Newport Beach area, and eventually bought that business in 1966. Rawlings sold the flag shop in 1994, but continued the embroidery store under her own name.
“The nautical part of it, I won’t say came naturally; I had to learn it” Rawlings said. “But it was easy. I loved the water. I loved the boating. And then it kind of turned into coaching.”
She moved to a home at the Newport Sea Base in 1974, and became a scout leader for the Sea Scouts. She was also a volunteer for the Coast Guard, and has been a referee for NCAA rowing events for 26 years. She’ll be in New Jersey as a guest referee for the Division I Women’s championship in June.
Two of her sons, Billy Rawlings and Bob Rawlings, help run the Newport Aquatic Center and the Sacramento State Aquatic Center, respectively. Another, Brian Rawlings, helped design Icebreaker Argus, a 68.5 meter long vessel built to explore polar waters.
“Not very much of a businesswoman”
Yacht clubs have remained some of Rawlings’ most loyal customers. Other longtime clients include local fire and police departments, as well as rowing teams and other aquatics programs at practically every high school in Coastal Orange County. So it’s not unusual for Rawlings, Pierce and a third seamstress who has also been working with them for decades, Joyce Brownell, to find garments they personally stitched while they’re out and about in the community.
“With the Junior lifeguard backpacks — I live on the Peninsula, so I can see [junior lifeguards] riding by on their bicycles, and I can go, ‘Hey! I did that one!’” Pierce said.
Pierce, Rawlings and Brownell take pride in their work, and have personally sacrificed to ensure everything that leaves their shop meets their standards. They’ve eaten the cost to replace garments inadvertently damaged by equipment malfunctions. And even when a swimming or rowing team shows up with a couple hundred blankets and polo shirts that need to be finished in a week or so, it’s hard for them to say no and disappoint their clients.
“I spent many a night here, locked the doors and kept sewing,” Rawlings said. “And I still love sewing. It’s my own fault when that happens because I’ve said yes to something that was overwhelming or too much, and had to get it done.”
“But look at this! And look at these!” she continued while proudly holding up backpacks customized for the Newport Beach Junior Lifeguards and a folder of elaborately stitched designs in blue, gray, gold and practically every possible color of thread.
Rawlings said their personal investment into each piece they make, and the relationships she built with the people she serves have been the key to her shop’s longevity. She considers most of them her friends.
“I am obviously, and still, not very much of a businesswoman,” the founder of a store that has lasted almost six decades said.
“Friends brought in business, and it just expanded from there.”
Humble beginnings founded on meaningful connections led Rawlings to a finale in a career she can bow out of proudly. In some ways, her decades in business mirrored the process of crafting a fine garment.
“A lot of the finished project depends on how you start; how you hoop, the backing you use, the overlay you use, whatever the material you’re embroidering on requires,” she said. “... No puckering. you don’t want pucker.”
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