Last summer the Register embarked on a project of following interior designer Thomas Bartlett on a project to see what we could glean from the trail of a master.

 Here’s one of the most valuable lessons we came away with: The designer may be the quarterback, the one with the vision and plans, and the ability to choose one color out of thousands, but it’s his team, the people he relies on, who help transform ideas into a home.

Among the people Bartlett regularly turns to is Sharon Lomonaco, the owner of Royal Draperies and Interiors in Napa. While many think sewing is a vanishing art, at Royal Drapery Lomonaco’s own team has been creating custom draperies, cushions (including ones for Bartlett’s own line of patio furniture) and other upholstered items for residents of the Napa Valley for 33 years.

When Lomonaco and her husband, Pete Lomonaco, launched the business in 1976, the two Napans were merging a lifetime of talents and experiences — sewing and tailoring as well as the fine art of dealing with people and helping them discover just what it they want to make their house into a home.

Growing up in Portland, Ore., Sharon Lomonaco, learned to sew from her mother, who taught sewing for Singer after World War II. “In those days,” Lomonaco explained, “if you bought a Singer, you got sewing lessons — and every girl learned how to sew.”

In the 1950s, she moved to Napa where her sister was working in a bank. A single mom with three children, Lomonaco took a job as a waitress to support them. “We lived on tips,” she recalled.

One of the men she waited on turned out to be Pete Lomonaco, who had worked as a tailor at Rough Rider company in Napa. Divorced, he brought his young son to the restaurant, pointed out the young blonde waitress and asked the boy, “How would you like her to be your mom?”

The boy thought it was a good idea. “I never asked what would have happened if he’d said ‘no,’” Lomonaco reflected.

Pete took a job as a bartender to get to know the woman he had his eye on. They became friends, started dating and married. “If you can imagine this,” Lomonaco said, “he was 47 and had been married four times. I was 24 and had three kids. 

“In those days, everyone in Napa knew everyone’s business — people would come up to me and ask me which wife (of Pete’s) I was, and I’d say, ‘The last one.’

But,” she added, “if I’d taken odds in Las Vegas, I’d be a rich woman.” The marriage was a happy and prosperous one for 46 years, until Pete’s death two years ago.

The Lomonacos considered opening a restaurant in Portland, but a visit back to that city showed her that her home was now in Napa. They decided instead to pool their talents and open Royal Drapery.

This was a time, Lomonaco explained, when housing tracts were going in all over Napa, and many of the new home owners were going to the local Montgomery Ward, then at the Bel Aire Plaza, to furnish them — including curtains and upholstery.

“We went to Montgomery Ward and asked how would you like to be able to send your business to a local company,” she said. Montgomery Ward signed on, and subsequently the Napa store ended up with one of the biggest home furnishing businesses in the country; and Royal Draperies was on its way.

Sharon and Pete Lomonaco built their work room on California Boulevard in Napa, hired expert crafts people and slowly, steadily built their business. Today the clients include some of the most well-known names in the valley, including elite designers like Bartlett.

Many of the clients never actually visit the Royal Drapery premises. Lomonaco and her staff go to them to begin the work of choosing the right fabrics and designs — work that requires the combined skills of an artist, craftswoman, psychologist and marriage counselor.

“Most people know what they want,” Lomonaco said, “but they don’t always know they know it.” The process of helping them discover it — and then finding compromises that both a husband and wife can live with — is something she takes her time with.

“When I leave a house,” she said, “I don’t want it to look like me, I want it to look like you.”

A visit to the workshop, however, gives a glimpse as just how daunting these choices can be:  In the entrance are samples, great sweeps of velvet and silk draperies, and books full of fabric samples and trims.

“These are just to give people an idea of what we can do,” Lomonaco explained. “Not everyone needs this,” she added, pointing to a regal display of blue velvet draperies with a taffeta tufts and silver trim. “But people will know, that if we can do this, we can do what they want too.”

 A large window looks into the shop, where the eight-person staff is busily at work on a variety of projects. Amid the bolts of fabric, sewing stations and a rainbow array of threads are unusual machines: a pleater, a “flawing” machine to inspect fabrics, a high, suspended hanging bar for draperies to accurately mark hems. 

Many of the staff are long-time employees, valued for their skills and happy in their work. Among them are Pat Allrod, who has worked for Royal Draperies for 24 years, Rosa Papa, 10 years; Evangeline Mena-Ortiz, seven years; Elena Cortez, seven years, and Crystal Hamblin, seven years. The relative newcomer is Charlotte Deleon, who has “only” been there one year.

Dosolina Pasquini has worked for Royal Draperies for “32 and a half years.” She joined the Lomanacos just six months after they opened the business.

“It’s been fun,” she said of her work at Royal Draperies. “We are all proud.”

On this day, Paquini was overseeing an order from none other than Thomas Bartlett for a magnificent set of draperies to cover a grand set of two-story high windows. They are made from fabric painted by Barbara Beckmann, another craftswoman with a business based in Napa. Beckmann’s exquisite, hand-painted fabrics, Lomonaco said, “are art.”

This job, Pasquini said, so far had entailed 160 yards of hand-painted Beckmann fabric, in 244 inch lengths. “You should go see it,” she said. “It is incredible.”

“I have been blessed with my clients,” said Lomonaco — and with her work, her staff, her family and her marriage. Continuing on with Royal Draperies since Pete Lomonaco’s death, she keeps photos of the dapper, white-haired Pete by her desk. “We were lucky,” she said. “We worked together 24/7. We had 46 amazing years.

“We don’t have control of what life gives you,” she concluded, “but we can control what we do with it.”

Royal  Draperies and Interiors is at 3149 California Blvd. For more information, call 226-2022.