Tag Archives: wedding dress
Mica
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Many of you have been asking about shaving mica. I don’t know if there is a great way to describe how to do this.
But if you look closely at the large rock, you can see that there are very fine, thin layers. We VERY carefully slide a needle under a layer, and slowly pull it off. It is not easy, but you get good at it after a while, and it becomes very habit forming. Then you get carried away seeing how many times you can slice a layer. But if you do it TOO many times and take it down to only one VERY thin layer, you lose the refracting quality, and it just becomes flat and shiny.
We really wanted it to refract light, so we stopped at two or three layers on each shard.
The Materials
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Gown and sleeve fabrics. We tried to avoid this fabric and weave our own, but once we saw it on a camera test under candlelight, we knew it was the right one. It just did the proper shimmer. Now we have a lot of beautiful silver wool, waiting for Season Two.
Here is the mica. We all took turns shaving mica during stressful times. It was a very zen activity, chop wood, carry water. Saved our sanity. We started with three chunks of mica about 4″ long by 3″ thick. We shaved them down to a large container of paper thin flakes.
The sleeves. We have this beautiful little smocking machine that operates with a hand crank. Makes beautiful, magical things.
Here is our sleeve. Ethereal. I love these sleeves!
This is one of our leaves on the embroidery frame. We made hundreds of leaves and acorns, all by hand. You can see the metal strands very clearly, it is an amazing process. Extraordinary work!
And finally, a closeup on the stomacher, All the leaves, stems and acorns have been painted to look as though they have oxidized, giving them lovely tone and depth. The sticking on the silk reflects the stitching done on the sleeve. Just stunning work by my amazing crew.
You can also see what happened to the top of our bodice. there was another piece to the dress, a band of very translucent silver fabric, that bordered the top of the gown, bringing the neckline up a few inches and leaving her less bare. But when we were shooting, the taking off and on of the cloak, totally destroyed it. it was just too delicate to withstand the dragging of that heavy wool off and on. We stood on the side of the set dying a little, every time it went off and on, but they are never going to stop shooting so you can repair something like that. too time consuming. So, Claire reveals a bit more than we planned, but Jamie no doubt enjoyed it!
The Inspiration
17This dress was displayed in “candlelight”. Incredible.
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These paintings provided the inspiration for the neckline.
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This piece is a beautiful waistcoat Liz found on Ebay. Incredibly fine work. We think there are little bits of mirror in it, encircled with metal embroidery. And a bazillion little spangles ( the equivalent of today’s sequins, but metal not plastic).
Once upon a time, on another planet, a million years ago…
45…Gary and I made a lookbook to help Ron sell the show. With images and sketches, we told the story of Outlander, chapter by chapter. One of the Chapters was The Wedding.
These are some of the images.
And there was a sketch. Thought you might enjoy!
