La Bricoleuse

Mary McClung's new book, Foam Patterning and Construction Techniques, is a must-have for costume production artists with an interest in mascot making, theme park walkarounds, and other large-scale creature costumes.

McClung starts out with a section on types of foam, as well as tools, adhesives, and other media for use with foam in production. This section alone will be a godsend if you have some knowledge of working with foam but only know common vocabulary terms like "couch foam" as opposed to descriptors used by vendors like "urethane foam." She includes a thorough section on safety, both in terms of work practices and protective equipment to use when using the adhesives and paints which work on foam. I always love to see a new reference book in our field with current safety information--for too long our industry has gotten by without adequate education in this area, and many of the old "classic" reference texts are from a bygone age in which one might, say, shoot pictures of someone demonstrating a technique with a cigarette burning in an ashtray near an open container of solvent or similar.

She goes on to discuss concepts of design with respect to these kind of character costumes (or other foam-based elements of realizing shapes/structures), and techniques for patterning and construction with foam as a medium. She covers a wide range of techniques and media for "skinning" the forms, too--not only some great stuff on fur and fleece, but also latex/cheesecloth and other surfacing ideas. McClung even talks about elements of finishing like the painting of fur to create a more sophisticated look, which are hard to find documented at all.

The last section of the book documents the process from start to finish on six different foam-based projects, from cute cartoon character heads to sleek superhero armor. It's great to see an artist's procedure from start to finish on such drastically different designs, using the same basic range of techniques.

Full disclosure: this review is written in response to a digital review copy provided to me by the publisher, Focal Press, so that i might decide whether to adopt the book as a text for my graduate level maskmaking class. While i remain undecided as to whether i will adopt the book as a required text, i will definitely consider it a recommended book and I intend to obtain a physical copy for my studio's library of reference books. Unfortunately though, the e-reader i had to use to access the text didn't give me any concept of the size or quality of the photos in a print version of the book or how the text would be laid out, so i suppose i'll ahve to wait til i get my hands on a physical copy to form an opinion on those aspects of the book. The info contained within makes it well worth the purchase regardless, even if the whole thing were printed in Comic Sans.

I received the review copy toward the end of spring semester (when i was in the midst of teaching Masks & Armor, the course for which i would potentially use it) and one of my students elected to try one of the processes described in that final section of examples. The book was helpful, clear, and full of good suggestions for how to modify techniques or further explore media. In fact, i'd say the book would be a great reference not just for those of us working the business of costume production but also for those whose hobbies encompass cosplay and other types of character costuming for fun.

Two large foam thumbs up!

After my prior post on resources for working with esparterie [1], some helpful milliners and scholars commented or PM’d me with two other titles of books which feature chapters or sections on the material.

The ABC of Millinery by Madame Eva Ritcher was published in 1950, and positions itself as an introductory handbook for “every woman” with an interest in learning millinery techniques. I absolutely adore the photography in this book—glamorous images of various hats created and modeled by the author, interspersed with detail shots of various techniques she describes in the book.

However, I’m not entirely convinced that Ritchie is using the word “sparterie” to describe the two-ply material composed of a layer of esparto and a layer of crinoline. Based on her description of it—a material sold in rolls, in both black and white—and the detail shots throughout the text, it appears that she’s using the term to refer to what I know as buckram: a single-ply woven material stiffened with starch. Nowhere does she mention the technique of skinned joins, nor does she discuss any precautions for avoiding damage to the esparto straw layer as in other references like the Denise Dreher book. And, in all of the detail shots, the material she’s using is clearly one-ply and looks to be standard buckram.

Ritcher's book has great illustrations and as a handbook for basic buckram structures, straw, and felt, it’s a solid resource with lovely period examples, but as an esparterie reference, it’s puzzling at best when taken alongside the other available information out there.

Hats on Heads: the Art of Creative Millinery by Mildred Anlezark was first published in 1965, but went through several reprinting in the 1990s. It’s clear that Anlezark is talking about a two-ply straw/cotton material in her book, because she gives an excellent descriptive definition of it in her “Materials” section, though she describes the straw layer as hemp instead of esparto, and cites it as coming from Hong Kong instead of Japan or Spain.

As the book contains no close-up photographs of the material Anzelark calls “willow,” I have no way to know whether the use of the word “hemp” is a misnomer (and thus what she’s talking about is similar to the vintage esparto-based willow I’ve acquired from the estate of Madame Sheeta), or if it’s a different esparterie substitute which is/was literally made from hemp instead of esparto grass.

Anlezark’s book has several sections which deal with using the material—Moulded Willow Brim, Willow Crown in Two Sections, Willow Breton, Willow Brims, Willow Pillbox, and Willow Whimsy. In none of them does she mention the skinned join technique, or any techniques which take advantage of the two-layer nature of the material such as the edge-wiring technique mentioned in the Denise Dreher text in which one cuts away some of the esparto layer but leaves the crinoline layer longer to encase the wire after attaching.

For the most part, Anlezark treats it like other one-ply foundation materials in terms of the methods described. The “Moulded Willow Brim” section is interesting for how it addresses creating a brim foundation with a rounded edge by folding the willow back on itself, but I’m not sold on her using the material in the most advantageous way to do this, because she doesn’t have you drop the wire inside the fold to obfuscate its presence when covering, and she doesn’t address techniques for grading the headsize opening when you’re working with four layers of material before you’ve even set your crown on.

There’s a lot of other information in this book on both structured and soft stitched hat styles in a range of materials, so it seems like a solid reference book in general, but IMO there are better references for working with esparterie/willow out there which cover a broader range of techniques specific to it as a medium.


Thank you so much to those who pointed me toward these and several prior-mentioned books: Dirk Seegmüller, Rachel Worboys, and leebee7.

I would love to hear from anyone else who knows of books in any language which feature information on working with this material. I feel certain there have to be some French resources i’ve yet to locate, and probably Spanish and Japanese as well. My goal is to wind up with a series of posts which are easily findable via online search-engines, evaluating and comparing primary source material on the subject of esparterie techniques.


[1] A.k.a. willow, spartre, sparterie, spatra, esparto-cloth…how many names does this stuff have? Geez. :)

So, first up, a caveat: the author of this book is a colleague and a personal friend. However, I don't do shill reviews for friends' books. If i don't think someone's book is worth touting to my readers, i just don't mention it. However, Margaret Peot's Stencil Craft is well worth a mention.

June is here, which means it's officially the 10th Anniverary Month for the blog!

I'm still running the Best of La Bricoleuse flashbacks over on Facebook, featuring a daily repost of some of the highlights of the past decade, but I also want to recognize that one of the great things which came about in tandem with writing this blog was the publication of my textbook, Sticks in Petticoats: Parasol Manufacture for the Modern Costumer.

I wrote the book because in my professional experience as a costume crafts artisan (though in some theatres this winds up being the responsibiity of the props artisan), i was asked to recover and repair numerous parasols, both antique and modern, according to the specifications of costume designers, but could find NO written information on how others might have done so in the past. I decided that, when i was finished, i would begin work on documenting the various things i'd learned, and Sticks in Petticoats became the result.

It remains to my knowledge the only extant book on the subject.

So, for the entire month of June, I've put Sticks in Petticoats on sale for 30% off, as one more thank-you for reading and supporting this blog! If you've been on the fence about whether you wanted to buy the book or not, maybe this is the month to do it.

Download the eBook for $9.99 (formerly $14.99)
(This is actually 33% off because i like easy numbers, and Lulu doesn't precalculate discounts on digital downloads.)

Purchase a print copy in full color for $24.19 (formerly $34.56)

Purchase a print copy in black-and-white for $18.43 (formerly $26.33)

I promise i have some exciting new posts coming up soon, including ones about a batik project, more 3D printing adventures, and making costume display replicas for the Museum of Science Fiction!

And again, thank you ALL for reading this blog. :D

This is a topic which comes up over and over on the email lists and discussion groups frequented by professional costumers--what single textbook could replace the out-of-print "industry bible" of Deborah Dryden's Painting and Dyeing for the Theatre?

And, yes, there are a lot of dye books out there to consider--comprehensive ones that cover a lot of different aspects of surface design, working with various classes of dye, etc. That might even be part of the problem: the fact that there are a LOT of good books to consider. This book is better in terms of surface design technique overviews, that book is better for specifically fiber reactive dye use. Book A's fantastic for covering different classes of dyes but Book B is better when it comes to safe work practices. Et cetera.

For someone like me that does run a dye facility (with an attendant library of numerous reference books), who also teaches a course specifically tailored to, well, how dyeing and surface design must be tailored to theatrical production demands, I've yet to find a single book I like as well as hers. Sure, i provide a lot of supplementary material from other texts, but when i consider what's the one book i'd like my graduate students to take with them into the workplace, the core beginning of their own future theatrical dye shop's library? Dryden's is the one. And, judging by the number of times this comes up, i'm not alone.

But, Dryden's book is long out-of-print and her former publisher, Heinemann, has no plans to bring the book back even as a digital release, nor to produce a new, updated edition despite the clear demand for such a thing. The market would indicate that this is true as well, the demand for the text--used copies of the Dryden book are listed on Amazon and Alibris for several hundred dollars. As such, no college bookstores can source any used copies for a theatrical dye class these days. But, there's one other option...

At my school, we do have a print shop arm of the campus bookstore, and they WILL create an educational reprint of an out-of-print book, provided the rights-holder grants permission. Here's what that looks like:

As you can see, the volume our print shop produced is in the interior an exact copy of the original--largely black and white with the full-color photographic insert in the middle of the volume. The reprint copy is a perfect-bound standard sized ("workbook sized") textbook, with the Dryden pages centered in the larger format same as you see with the cover art. In fact, i actually like this size better than the original for a textbook, since it gives my students wider margins all around in which to make notes. After seeing this test copy, i think I'd also like future volumes to be spiral-bound, so that students can open it to the relevant pages and lay it flat on the table while working on dye labs.

I asked the bookstore about exactly how other professors and students might take advantage of this resource. The print specialist i've been working with advised that, if other teachers wish to use the Dryden text, that it's probably easiest and most expeditious to consult the bookstores at their own specific universities, rather than attempting to mail-order copies like mine from the UNC-CH print shop. She did say that our store could easily provide the book to others within the NC state university system, so if you happen to be a student or teacher at one of the many other North Carolina universities, i've already done all the legwork on setting up the reprint capabilities with our bookstore so you can piggyback onto this deal by having your bookstore call ours. (Or, drop by the UNC student stores if you're in the Chapel Hill area.)

So, it's not a new book tailored to the specifics of theatrical dyework, but it's an option to pursue if, like me, you really just want to keep using the Dryden text as the foundation for your class.

So, my super-fantabulous, brilliant colleague and fellow writer Margaret Peot tagged me in the Writing Process Blog Tour. Margaret is a supremely talented artist, illustrator, costume painter, and author, and one of my favorite people in all of New York City. Y'all will recognize her name because I’m always pimping her most recent book, The Successful Artist’s Career Guide, every time she does a giveaway, because I seriously wish that I’d read the thing when I was like, 20. Except she hadn’t written it yet then.

The blog tour concept is a pay-it-forward sort of interview-esque thing, in which I answer four questions about my writing process, and at the end, “tag” two fellow writers who themselves will participate and answer the questions in their own blogs. It seemed like a fun idea, and a way to kind of share a little bit of crossover exposure between the respective audiences of the blogs of the writers involved. This is actually a cross-post from my more general author website, RachelPollock.net, since it applies not just to my writing about costume production topics, but all areas of my writing in general. (BTW, I have a Facebook page for my writing now, should you wish to like it. You can also like La Bricoleuse there as well.)

So, here are my answers to the interview questions:

1) What are you currently working on?

I guess technically you could say I’m currently working on getting a literary agent. Except I’m in the “waiting to hear back from sending queries” stage, so to keep myself from climbing the walls and forking my eyeballs, I’ve got a few things in process.

I have a trio of short stories that I’m working on—one’s in its first-draft stage and two more are in revisions. The first-draft one is about a college professor who hooks up with the blue-collar father of her least-favorite student, and drama ensues. In revisions, one is a sort of urban fairytale about a boy with sea-urchin hair who knits a dress for a drag queen and falls in love with her, and the other is an open-road story whose protagonist is a retired stripper.

And, I’m also co-writing a piece on a comprehensive survey of mask-making materials with a former student of mine, Candy McClernan. Candy did a poster-session exhibit about it at the USITT conference this past spring, and someone from Theatre Design & Technology asked if she’d write it up for publication. She wondered if i’d be interested in co-authoring, and there you go.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

This question presumes that I have a genre, which I definitely don’t. I think my fiction and creative nonfiction are informed by a fabulist lifestyle and having grown up in the American South. I don’t know exactly why, but formative years spent in the South are like germinating in a hothouse for cultivation of some rich fruit, if you’ve got a bent for wordsmithy.

And I’d love for a whole pile of blogs to spring up about theatrical costume production, that were like La Bricoleuse but written by, you know, OTHER PEOPLE, but so far I have only run across blogging costume designers. Which is great, but my tent’s pitched in the Maker camp. If you know of any, please post a link in the comments! I'd love to sidebar them.

3) Why do you write what you write?

I write fiction because the demons keep me up at night if I don’t. I write essays to try and figure out where the demons come from. And I write my technical stuff for costuming because I make my living dressing those damn demons, too. (Kidding! I’ve only ever dated two actors. Oh, wait, three. Well, fine, four.)

But seriously, I believe in open-source costuming—theatre’s a collaborative art, and trade secrets are for businesspeople. If I can document something that’s been heretofore undocumented (like how to cover/restore/repair parasols, or how to rubberize shoes properly), someone out there has an easier time of it when they’re asked to do that task.

4) How does your individual writing/illustrating process work?

On the creative front, it started as, “Drink copiously, then rage into a .doc file.”

In graduate school, it consisted of writing critiques every night for a couple hours before bed, and spending 14+ hours on a Saturday drafting or revising.

Now that I’m not in grad school, it involves one of two things. Either I’m at my standing desk, sucking down coffee and working on something long-form in Scrivener (usually first thing in the morning, either for an hour if I have to go to work that day, or as long as I feel the drive, if I don’t), or I’m lying on my couch with my laptop (which is how this post is happening) writing short-form in Word. I guess I also sometimes blog here in labricoleuse from my office on campus.

I’m a write-in-silence gal—I don’t listen to music, though I do listen to it for creating a mood before writing something. I also tend to work ekphrastically, making moodboards for novels on Pinterest and scrolling through them before or while writing.

For long-form work, I like making structure diagrams and flowcharts on huge pieces of butcher paper tacked to my studio door, too, to get my head around how the book will actually function.

And if I hit a wall on where a piece of writing needs to go next, I go for a walk. There’s a network of trails through the woods by my house, and there are three routes I like to take—a 30-minute one, a 45-minute one, and an hour-long one. Usually I have figured out what’s next by the end of the 30-minute one, but if not, I keep going. So far, nothing’s been able to remain creatively-stuck past the hour-long trail walk.

And, for costume production writing, it's a bit more workmanlike: sit down, write what's required, submit.

Now, it’s my turn to tag two writers.

In my very first craft workshop in graduate school (Speculative Fiction with Jim Grimsley), Bryan L. Camp and I got assigned to work as a team in creating a television pilot pitch for a series adaptation of the Chinese legend, Monkey: Journey to the West. We had a fantastic time of it, and he’s become one of my go-to friends for writer feedback on drafts of work in progress. Bryan writes freaky noir-ish speculative fiction weirdness, often centered around his beloved home of New Orleans. I think of his work as the literary equivalent of getting plastered at a juke joint and then jumping into a second-line with Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman.

Sara Crawford is another grad-school pal—she and I took several playwriting workshops together, and also a really fantastic and creatively inspiring “acting for writers” seminar, where we worked with playwrights running scenes from their works in progress, or improvising scenes with their characters. In addition to plays, Sarah writes supernatural YA novels and meta-writing e-books, and the occasional piece for websites like HelloGiggles.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "man, i wish i knew more about the science of dyeing, but science textbooks are all so dense and complicated, i just don't have the basic knowledge to get much out of them..."?

I did, for years, until i took some distance-education classes in textile science, dyeing and finishing from the NCSU College of Textiles. It remains the best thing i've ever done for my career, in terms of gaining truly practical, applicable knowledge to help me do my job better, knowledge i use literally every single day. I realize though that many theatrical dyers don't have the option to do the same--my tuition was waived as one of my benefits, and my superiors at work were hugely supportive of my study. Money, time, and colleague support are sometimes not as easy to come by. And besides, it can be intimidating to someone with an artistic self-image to enroll in a polymer chemistry class. Sometimes we can be our own biggest hurdles.

Most of us who dye for costuming purposes come from art-dyeing backgrounds, where the chemistry is glossed over. I mean, sure, back when i was getting my degree in costuming, i took a graduate level class in dyeing for theatre, but it was offered through the department of dramatic art, not chemistry or textiles, and it was taught by a professor of costume design. Even our graduate level courses often deal more with processes like batik and screenprinting than with the basic science of why dyes do what they do on a molecular level.

And yet, each class of dyes does something very different to the fibers it affects, and IME the majority of theatrical dyework does not involve the fun, artsy projects like shibori or batik or silk painting. Sure, those come along once in a while, but at least 80% of the work i do in my dyeshop is completely straightforward. Dye this to match that. Can we dye this that color? Why won't this take dye? Can we strip the color out of this? All the beautiful shibori scarves in the world won't answer these questions, but a basic grasp of the science will.

But how? You don't have time or money or the inclination to take textile science classes. You just want to read a book about it. Well, i've just read the book you need.

Linda Knutson's Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers was first published in 1982, but it's far, far from outdated or irrelevant to the 21st-century dyer. She doesn't dumb down the science, but she does explain it in accessible terms with simple, easily parsed diagrams and illustrations. She explains the chemical differences between classes of dyes, structurally why each one works (or doesn't work) on particular fibers.

Knutson also covers a wide range of related topics, from color theory and how it applies to color-mixing of dyestuffs, to fiber structure and how it relates to shrinkage/felting/weave strength. She discusses ways in which one might choose to incorporate equipment from a science lab into a dye studio (such as graduated cylinders and pipettes). The book has an excellent index and glossary as well. The age of the book makes the list of suppliers in the back largely obsolete, but finding suppliers of dyes and auxilliaries in the age of the Google search is not a daunting prospect.

Two orders of business today: giving away that copy of the Resurrection Engines anthology, and the first in a series of reviews of books on the subject of dyeing: Dyeing and Screenprinting on Textiles, by Joanna Kinnersly-Taylor.

I used the Random Number Generator to select the winner (assigning all the comments here a number by the order of receipt, then appending all the comments on Facebook in the same fashion), and it chose


Congrats, Lee! Hope you enjoy the book! I'll contact you privately for mailing instructions.


Now, recall my post a few weeks back about the out-of-print status of my old dye-class standby text, Deborah Dryden's Fabric Painting and Dyeing for the Theatre.

In the weeks that followed, two heartening things happened. First, a staff member at Heinemann Drama responded to my email, saying they were looking into the possibility of releasing the Dryden text as an e-book. Then a short time later, I received an email from Dryden herself--someone had forwarded her my post. She expressed dismay at the high prices used copies of her text  were listing at on services like Alibris.com, and said Heinemann had returned to her all rights to her work. She mentioned the possibility of releasing it herself with a POD/ebook company, and potentially in an updated new edition.

Which, all this is wonderful news for the long-term, and perhaps the book will once again be available the next time i teach my dye class (which will be Spring 2015), but I'm moving forward as if that won't be the case. What text or texts might I use to replace the Dryden book?

See, yes, the Dryden text is twenty years old and sure, it could stand to be updated. However, the main reason that I have stuck with it as my text is that it is fairly comprehensive and frames dyeing and surface design within a theatrical context so very well.

In terms of dye recipes and products/auxilliaries/etc., we talk in my class about doing your own legwork, how any book's "recipes" are only starting places unless they are formulations you yourself record with the intent to replicate later (such as in long-running shows where you know you will need to dye new fabric for new cast members over the course of the run, or even in short runs if for any reason a process needs repeating). We talk about classes of dyestuffs and where the starter recipes can be found for various types--for example, companies like PRO Chemical and Aljo Dye make all their dye recipes available on the web. We talk about the math of scaling your recipes in ratios, and the chemistry of why different types of dye need different types of auxiliaries. None of this figured into why I used the Dryden text.

I used the Dryden text because she includes information about things to consider when setting up or overhauling a theatrical costume shop's dye facility, because she talks about distressing and aging of garments, because she places surface design within the context of a functioning costume shop and as a part of the process of realizing a costume designer's vision. Even at twenty years old, the level of safety information in Dryden's book is vastly superior to most other dye books out there. The fact that she addresses the use of basic and disperse dye classes is great, and she includes information about stuff like mixing your own French Enamel Varnish (FEV), stuff my students need, i feel, all collected in one place.

But, until/unless it's rereleased, I need to decide what will replace it as my text(s) next time around, so i'm auditioning books. I solicited opinions from other professional and theatrical dyers and professors of similar classes as mine on the USITT costumers email group, and I pulled some potential titles from the recommendations of my colleagues. I also took a gander at Dr. Paula Burch's book reviews--Burch is a scientist with a particular interest in dyestuffs and maintains one of the most useful clearinghouse reference sites on the web for dye information.

Today, i'm reviewing the first of four contenders: Joanna Kinnersly-Taylor's Dyeing and Screenprinting on Textiles. This book was recommended to me by a scientist friend in the dyeing field, whom i know from my time spent taking dyeing and finishing classes over at the NCSU College of Textiles.

Kinnersly-Taylor is a textile artist based in Glasgow, Scotland, which unfortunately makes her book potentially confusing as a primary class text, since all the measures are metric and most of the brands of dyes and auxiliaries are UK specific. There are conversion charts, sure, but when students are learning an unfamiliar and complex subject and some may have no experience beyond Rit in a washing machine, i don't want to ask them to work from a book where I have to keep reframing things for them ("It says Metapex but that means Synthrapol for the US.")

However, this book is fantastic and I plan to get it for my personal library regardless. It's got excellent information about safe work practices and some great images of and info about industrial dye equipment one might consider if setting up a high-volume standalone dye studio catering to the entertainment industry such as A Dyeing Art: steamers, heat presses, winch dyers/beck dyers, and more. She also coveres all the classes of dyes the Dryden text does. This is an issue i have with many art-oriented dye books; they often only address fiber reactives and/or acid dyes in any depth.

In addition to screenprinting, Kinnersly-Taylor covers many more surface design techniques like resists, transfer printing, and digital printing, and offers good explanations of topics like flocking, foiling, and discharge printing. She's got a helpful section on the different types of print repeats and how to manipulate your art to achieve them. She lays out the processes and the science in an accessible but not dumbed-down way, and doesn't pad the text with "Make Your Own Shibori Scarf!"-style projects as some otherwise useful arts-n-crafts dye books do.

The appendices in it are great as well--glossary, a list of auxiliaries and their uses, a worldwide list of suppliers divided by country/region, and a decent index though not comprehensive (that's another beef i have with many art-dye books: no index).

The section that i find most dear to my heart, though is the step-by-step instructions for making what Kinnersly-Taylor calls a Dustbin Steamer--essentially, how to make your own pipe steamer from a trash can and a coffee samovar! Bricolage at its finest. Given that a new pipe steamer runs around $1100, I love that she's written up a means for making one from stuff you can get at a thrift store--even the most budget-strapped dyer could make one of these. (Of course, Dharma Trading has instructions online for making one from galvanized stove pipe as well, so this alone is not why folks should check out the book.)

So, in terms of a new primary text for my class, this isn't it, but a secondary text we'll look at and a new addition to my library, most definitely!


And lastly, i must congratulate and brag on a trio of my grad students who attended the Southeastern Theatre Conference this past weekend.

Second year Kelly Renko and first year Colleen Dobson were both finalists for the prestigious Marian A. Smith Scholarship for the pursuit of graduate study in the field of costuming--they only choose three finalists out of all their applicants so that in and of itself is a great achievement. And at the banquet it was announce that Colleen was awarded the scholarship!

In addition, second year Leah Pelz won first prize in the Costume Craft Competition for her exhibition of five examples of her millinery work, all of which you've seen in the back posts of this blog.

Congratulations to all three for these wonderful distinctions! I couldn't be more proud.