A year in costumes.... Princess Bride and Princess Jehnna, lots of princesses!

So this year has been a busy one. Most of the costumes I have made have been the Padme Amidala Pastel Lake Gown, which is fun mind you, buuuutt, I have had some awesome customers that have great sense of imagination.

Princess Buttercup

First off... I have NO idea why this stupid picture keeps loading on its side. So, my apologies. Back to business, One wonderful customer I have asked for Princess Buttercup Riding Habit from the Movie "the Princess Bride" (one of my Favs!). Such a fun dress to do. It was made from a tomato red rayon fabric that was a fabulous drape. I "crammed" the fabric on the cuffs (that is an actual technique, lol). and used grommet tape for the cuffs and the back of the dress laced with matching cord and metal tips. The neck line was "boned" to stand out because she requested it to have a deeper plunge than the movie dress. She wore this dress to Dragon*Con Atlanta 2010.

cuff for Buttercup riding habit

Buttercup Back

Once again not sure why the picture is on its side... :-/

As for the belt, I got a 2" wide brocade trim from a dress making store here in the beautiful Bay Area. ;D East San Jose to be exact. It was worth the jaunt. 

The second costume she commissioned me for was a bit more obscure. It was from the movie "Conan the Destroyer"! Netflix on Demand came in handy with this one, Try looking online for images for "Princess Jehnna" you will come up with two.


This one ----->

Conan the Destroyer

and this one ----->

Not too much help. Sooooo, I watched the end of Conan 400 times at least... Let me sum it up for you; virgin princess - sacrifice - crazy bad lady - lots of wind - scary gooey looking monster - sorcerer - blood - and Arnold and Grace Jones to the rescue!

I have got to tell you, this was a super fun dress to make. I found BEAUTIFUL irridecent blue polyester sheer fabric and sheer black fabric. I washed it in hot water, put it into the dryer on hot, pulled it right out, twisted it into ropes and let it cool. I got a great crinkled effect. For the white fabric I bought Ink Jet Silk Habotai by Jacquard. The sheets were a perfect size. My customer and I looked for "Ruins" type fonts on line and I placed random fonts using true type and Word. Printed it out and Voila! Instant instructions for virgin sacrifice. I hand stitched black cord around the silk and found great ornate beads at Michael's attached them to the cords. The dress has a leather type belt that is kind of like a corset. I made that out of pleather, boning, grommets and cording.