Costume Designer Wendy Partridge created Kate Beckinsale's Underworld cape and Selma Blair's Hellboy catsuit. Now she explores a different world as the woman behind the clothes of AMC's Hell on Wheels. AMCtv.com spoke with Partridge about mud, blood and Season 1.

Q: Were you born sewing?

A: No, but I've loved clothes every since I was a little girl. I started doing costumes for a little amateur theater during high school, and through that, I got a job doing a children's drama with the BBC in Edmonton. And I just went, "Wow, how cool is this?!" I'd been sewing and doing design for a number of years, but that opportunity made it seem like designing for film and television was a really cool way to make a living.

Q: The costumes in Hell on Wheels have so much grime. How do you do that?

A: We start at the very beginning, taking hundreds of items of clothing and weighing them down with rocks, and tying them up so all the knees and elbows get stretched out and wrinkled like people have slept in them. We wet them up and dry them that way, and then we make them dirty -- they're clean in reality, but we cover them in fairly permanent "fake dirt." That process takes a really long time, and it's a constant upkeep because we have to wash the clothes for the actors, and then start all over again.

Q: The actors are frequently bloody. Does that require them to have multiple versions of each costume?

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AMCtv.com talks to John Shiban, the Hell on Wheels executive producer who wrote and directed Episode 9, "Timshel." Shiban dishes on the origins of the show's beheading and turning an attack scene into a music video.

Q: You wrote and directed Episode 9. Which do you prefer, writing or directing?

A: I really enjoy directing a lot. It's probably one of the most stressful things you can do, but it's so rewarding when things go well. At the same time, when I write, I'm kind of directing in my head at the same time, so in a way it's kind of the same job.

Q: When you wrote Episode 9, did you include anything for yourself as a director?

A: I always attack stories visually, whether I'm writing or directing so I'm always looking for ways to bring the story to life with compelling and interesting pictures. When you know you're directing, you try to find really cool set pieces to do. For the attack scene I wanted to find a way to do Indian attacks in a way that I hadn't seen before. We pitched out the idea of almost making it like a music video.

Q: Tell me about the beheading scene and how that came about...

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This week Robin McLeavy, who plays Eva on AMC's Hell on Wheels, dishes on the challenges of putting on her character's face tattoo and why she agreed to play a working girl on the show.

Q: What's the makeup process like for that tattoo?

A: It was quite tortuous at the beginning, because it was a three-phase process initially. We started out with a transfer, which would get messed up -- so when I had it I wouldn't want to speak to anybody on set so as not to ruin that tattoo! Everyone thought I was being snobby because I couldn't talk to anybody! It was not a good start. By the second week we had a stencil, that we would do one piece at a time. And then by the third week we just had a proper face cut, kind of like a Hannibal Lecter mask so we could just spray through the stencil and it happened in a minute. 

Q: Do you ever go out on town and leave it on just to mess with people?

A: Not in public -- sometimes on the drive home the driver would ask about it! But the reason that Eva had the tattoo is pretty interesting.

Q: Your character is based on Olive Oatman, a real historical figure...

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