Patricia Norris | Costume designer, 83

Patricia Norris, 83, whose costume designs on

12 Years a Slave

garnered her a sixth Oscar nomination, died Feb. 20 at her Los Angeles home of natural causes.

Ms. Norris, who won an Emmy for her work on the 1990 Twin Peaks TV pilot, amassed about 100 credits in her more than four-decade career. Her other Oscar nominations were for Days of Heaven (1978), The Elephant Man (1980), Victor Victoria (1982), 2010 (1984), and Sunset (1988).

She mostly avoided films with contemporary settings, telling the New York Times: "They're very boring to me. I'm not a shopper."

She made a major exception for her collaborations with director David Lynch on his off-kilter Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and others.

"I can't do a modern movie," she said, "unless it's sort of twisted."

As a student at Stanford University, she studied archaeology and paleontology. In 1965 she got a job as a stock girl in MGM's costume department to provide for the children she was raising as a single mother, she told the Seattle Times in 1990. Working her way up, she earned her first credit as a costume designer on the western Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). - L.A. Times