Bohemian Cats updates

The Bohemian Cats project gets going!

We decided in November 2021 that really, we can't wait until the end of the pandemic before getting back to serious work on The Bohemian Cats. It's not that we've done nothing on the project since March 2020, but it slowed right down, as it has been very difficult for us to work together on costumes when we are mostly all still working from home. The good news is that we managed to get a few costumes done - including the Harlequin costumes that you can see in this card. So we have been able to get back to some real design - and the cards are beginning to emerge!

We now hope to open pre-orders late in 2022, or perhaps early in 2023. Each image is about a week of work, not counting making the costumes, so it really depends how much time we can devote to these images over the coming year.

To give you a little insight into the work that goes into the costumes (in future posts we will tell you about the building of the Baroque theatre!) we talked to Corinne Suarez, our couturier and seamstress and asked her about the process.

Firstly, she told us about the more difficult aspects. "The most challenging thing about the Harlequin costume was to made all the squares as identical as possible. And to sew all the parts together was demanding, because of all the seams underneath. The fabric became very thick and so it was difficult to have all the squares colours matching."

She pointed out the more rewarding sides of the project too! "I enjoyed the fact that I had to "create" the fabric for these costumes. It takes a long time to make them but it was nice because they were completely handmade from scratch."

You can see just a few stages of the sewing below. We used vintage silks and metallics from Japanese kimonos. Glorious fabrics - but not the easiest to work with!

We will be posting updates as we go along, so do please call in to this blog to see how we're progressing. As always, your comments and feedback are very welcome.