Thursday, October 31, 2013

Sister Queens, Finished!

A while back I posted that my friend, Vicky, and I were recreating some portraits of Katherine of Aragon and her older sister Juana of Castile (also known as Juana la Loca). We are finally finished with them and was able to have photoshoot to capture our work. Here was my original blog post - Sister Queens.

Though we did much of our own work on these costumes at first (Vicky working on hers and I working on my own) we switched it up and ended up working on eachother's to get them done. It's really satisfying to work on costumes with a partner, as each person can really shine in their own talents. The amount of time Vicky has put into beading her hood alone is enough for an entire costume!

Though these dresses may look simple on the surface, many many hours went into making sure all the details were perfect.

Vicky as Juana of Castile, showing off her Train on the staircase.

Jamie (me) as Katherine of Aragon, showing off my train as well. (I normally have a belt/tie like Vicky's, but I did forget it for this photoshoot.)



The dresses were extremely comfortable in the cold weather, and it was easy to look Regal.

Or sly.

Here you can see the amount of beadwork that went into Vicky's sleeves, (each flower is 2-4 beads, and the billiments on her hood quadruple that.)

Mine has much less beadwork than Vicky's dress, but there was still plenty.

A better close up of the work. She even beaded the gold trim on her middle layer gown.

My hood had a painful amount of tiny beads along with many painstaking hours to get those tiny pleats of the gold silk just right.