La Bricoleuse

This article is reprinted from ACTS FACTS, the monthly newsletter of the Arts, Crafts, and Theater Safety watchdog organization. I highly recommend subscribing to the newsletter, which is $20 for one year within the continental US, $23 for Canadian and Mexican delivery, and $26 for everywhere else. Check their website for more info.

Since many of us use solvent-based spray paints in the theatre, not only in aerosol cans but through airbrushes and Preval sprayer bottles, this is of particularly disturbing interest. If you thought your respirator was enough protective equipment, you're wrong.


Spray Paint Study: Major Exposure by Skin Absorption

A study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine of shipyard spray painters found that dermal exposure was a greater source of total exposure to solvent than inhalation exposure. While vapor inhalation is recognized as a primary occupational exposure and prevented by wearing respirators, the route of skin contact is usually ignored, the study said.

In tropical and subtropical countries particularly, the study said, it is too hot for spray painters to wear protective suits. For this reason, the study monitored 15 male Taiwanese spray painters during a three-day work period in August 2005. The workers wore long-sleeved shirts and trousers and used air-purifying, half-face respirators while spraying with airless guns to paint block units for assembling ships. The workers wore no chemically protective clothing or gloves.

For the study, researchers collected personal exposure data outside and inside the workers' respirator masks. Each worker had two samplers clipped to his collar. The participants wore the samplers a minimum of six hours a day. Dermal exposure samplers were taped directly onto workers' skin. Nine samplers--each three centimeters square--were placed on the back, upper arms, forearms, and upper legs. The dermal sampling was limited to two hours. Researchers also collected the workers' urine before and after each work shift.

Air samplers showed that the primary occupational exposure was to ethylbenzene and xylene solvents in the paints. Seven of the 40 air samplers outside the respirators had ethylbenzene ocencetrations above 100 parts per million, which is the threshold limit value (TLV) set by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Eleven of the 40 samples implied some level of overexposure to ethylbenzene and xylene, the study said.

The highest dermal exposure concentrations were found on the workers' upper legs. All of the dermal doses of ethylbenzene across the different body regions were higher when workers were spraying inside the assemblies than when they were spraying outside the assemblies. "Significant correlations were found between ambient concentrations of xylene and dermal exposure mass of xylene for all investigated body regions," the study said. Similar results were found for ethylbenzene.

Analyses of the workers' urine revealed a significant relationship between dermal exposure and levels of chemical exposure markers in the workers' urine. The study exstimated that the dermal absorption contribution to total exposure dose of xylene and ethylbenzene was approximately 62 percent and 84 percent, respectively. "Our results showed that the contribution of dermal exposure to the total dose was important," the study said.

COMMENT: Respiratory protection alone is not enough protection if air monitoring shows solvent concentrations from spray painting to be above the TLV for the solvents. When mists or high vapor concentrations are present, chemically protective clothing should also be recommended. This study shows that ordinary shirts and pants are not protective during spray painting.


This article is copyright ACTS, June 2007 (ISSN 1070-9274), reprinted courtesy of ACTS FACTS, Monona Rossol, Editor, 181 Thompson St. #23, New York, NY, 10012, 212-777-0062, ACTSNYC@cs.com, http://www.artscraftstheatresafety.org/

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How's that for disturbing? In only three days worth of monitoring, these painters--who clearly believed themselves to have adequate personal protective equipment in wearing long sleeve shirts and pants and air-purifying respirators--managed to get exposures above the TLV just from skin absorption. Something to think about next time you see someone go out to spray-paint something "real quick, just one thing," in, say, a tank top and shorts.

The Arts, Crafts, and Theatre Safety organization publishes a monthly newsletter entitled "ACTS FACTS," which contains various media articles about cautionary safety topics pertaining to the fields of arts and entertainment. This month there is an article that I would particularly like to share with my readership, as it addresses large-scale character/mascot costumes (also often known in the industry as "bigheads" or "walkarounds"). The character/mascot production industry is one into which many crafts artisans enter at some point in their careers.

This article is reprinted by permission from ACTS FACTS, Monona Rossol, Editor--181 Thompson St #23, New York, NY, 10012--(212)777-0062, ACTSNYC@cs.com -- http://www.artscraftstheatresafety.org/. It's contents are copyright ACTS, April 2007.

Disney Learns Lessons About Costume Safety
Orlando Sentinel, www.orlandosentinel.com, Beth Kassab, 3/6/07

Thousands of performers at Disney parks around the world must deal with physically demanding conditions and injuries from their heavy and sweltering hot costumes, overzealous children and other hazards. These performers at Disney's four Orlando theme parks reported enough injuries in 2005 to affect more than a third of the 1,900-person work force.

The reason is the costumes portraying 270 different characters can weigh as much as 47 pounds. Weight was blamed for 282 out of 773 injuries, mostly to the neck, shoulder or back, according to reports kept by Disney during 2005, the most recent year available for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). While some of the injuries were minor, the reports show that actors at Disney World were injured badly enough in cases in which the costume was cited as a factor to miss a combined 105 days of work in 2005. Actors were transferred to lighter-duty jobs for a month or longer at least 13 times that year because of costume-related conditions.

A burdensome costume head, typically a weighty part of the gear, was specifically cited in 49 cases, often resulting in neck or back strain. Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck heads, among others, were specifically mentioned in the reports.

Children or adults were listed as a cause in 107 injured, in which they pushed, pulled or otherwise hurt performers in costume. Some reports cited "excited" guests, characters who were "hit by guest," "jumping" children, "heavy" children and "child pulling on costume." Injuries from those incidents include bruises, sprains, and other ailments.

All told, the reported incidents ranged from a death in 2004 to minor ailments such as skin rashes. The death occurred when 38-year-old performer Javier Cruz died after he was hit and run over by a parade float backstage while dressed as Pluto. OSHA fined Disney $6300 because they had allowed employees to be in areas where they should not have been. But that incident also raised question about performer's poor vision while in costume.

Another issue is the heat that can build up in the costume especially in the hot Florida summers. Various gadgets such as fans, cooling tubes and ice vests were reportedly tried, but for the most part, they added more weight to the costume than they were worth. The gadgets tend to break, performers say, leaving them carrying additional pounds without any benefit. And in the dead of summer, performers reported that the ice in the vests melts before you get started.

Disney claims that in recent years it has recruited a former NASA engineer to address some of the issues on how the human body endures heat and weight. Disney also exchanges information with military researchers who examine the effects of heat and heavy loads on soldiers and has adopted some materials and techniques originally developed for the auto industry, Carol Campbell, vice president of Disney's character programs and development claims.

Disney also says it now provides classes for actors on how to bend down and pick up heavy items (such as the bag that contains their costume) and other ergonomically correct movements. And [sic] instructor-led warm-up class designed by sport-medicine experts at Florida Hospital is included at the beginning of each actor's shift.

COMMENT. ACTS would like to see Disney's finding made available to teachers of costume design in schools and universities. All of these issues of restricted vision, heat, and ergonomic factors should be incorporated into costume designing at the entry level in this profession.

I concur with ACTS' final comment--we artisans need to always be mindful of wearer-safety when creating costume items, and consideration of vision-range, interior heat, and overall weight must always be integrated from an engineering level, from concept to design to execution. I'll be teaching a course in the fall in maskmaking, which includes a section on bighead engineering and macropuppet costumes, so in a few months i'll be addressing this further on a practical, specific scale here in La Bricoleuse.

Incidentally, if you are interested in reading more about the circumstances surrounding the death of Javier Cruz, the incident is discussed at length here, on the Theme Park Insider forum, a discussion board for park workers and equipment operators and engineers.

The craftwork class i'm teaching this semester is a fairly broad introduction to millinery--it's challenging, in that it is aimed at production graduate students and presumes that those enrolled have advanced/couture sewing skills, but it also is designed for students who have had minimal or no hat-making experience. unluckymonkey asked me for recommendations on hatmaking info sources (specifically for felt hats), and that spurred me to make a post similar to the one a while back on my shoe class bibliography.


For the first unit, an overview of buckram hat form construction, i have the students read Tim Dial's book, Basic Millinery for the Stage. (It's a short book, so that goes quick.) It's a concise, straightforward overview of Mr. Dial's methods for stageworthy hatmaking, and if you've never made a hat or looked inside the "guts" of one, it's probably the best place to start. It's got photographs and diagrams to help elaborate on the text and is written in an easy-to-understand manner. If your interest in hatmaking is not for stage performance, bear in mind that Dial's book is aimed toward that--his techniques focus on speeding up production time and maximizing the durability of the hats. Stage millinery is slightly different from traditional millinery, in that traditional millinery employs meticulous handwork--often in a theatre milliner's construction, we'll substitute machine-stitching where possible in the interest of time-saving and durability.


The other required text for the course is Denise Dreher's From the Neck Up: An Illustrated Guide to Hatmaking. This book is much more in-depth than the Dial book and features an appendix with miniaturized pattern shapes for a variety of historical hat shapes. (I've found that, though you can scale these up and use them as patterns, they don't always scale up perfectly and are better viewed as guidelines for the shapes you're looking to make than hard-and-fast accurate patterns.) In addition to being an accomplished milliner for stage and film, Dreher has an extensive background in the study of millinery history so the book includes a lot of interesting information on hatmaking techniques of the past--for example, she discusses willow, a material once often used in millinery but which is (to my knowledge) no longer produced. I found three sheets of willow in our storage (presumably from some bygone donation of millinery supplies), so the information on working with it will come in handy for me very soon. This historical aspect of the book is also of particular interest to milliners who might be refurbishing vintage or antique hats, and who might come across techniques or materials in the interior with which they are unfamiliar.


A book that you'll find in many workshop libraries, but which i personally don't care for, is Classic Millinery Techniques: A Complete Guide to Making and Designing Today's Hats, by Ann Albrizio and Osnat Lustig, and by "today's hats" they mean "hats of the late 1980s and early 1990s," as the book was published in 1998. It includes a lot of color photography and the sections on trim and feathers are helpful (particularly the photo-map showing the various types of feathers, which can be a great resource when ordering feathers sight-unseen from a feather dealer, to make sure you order the right types), but it's specifically aimed toward those wishing to pursue millinery from a contemporary fashion design perspective and thus, for theatrical purposes, contains a lot of superfluous information. Additionally, it contains several errors--such as the mislabeling of a photo which erroneously illustrates the difference between millinery grosgrain and grosgrain ribbon--that can be confusing to the novice milliner.

The book also works my nerves with respect to my major pet peeve, flippancy about artisan safety. While i recognize that safety education is sorely lacking in most trade fields and that nearly all reference materials for topics like millinery have some poor advice or omissions about protecting one's self from hazardous chemicals, it really jerks my chain when modern references are practically dismissive about such things--this book contains attempts at drollery in this vein, such as advising the reader to use chemicals that potentially pose respiratory hazards, then adding a parenthetical afterthought like "(Did you remember to open a window?)" Are you kidding me?

I know it's a nerdy-safety-goggley thing, but i truly believe that educators and experts do newcomers to the field a vast disservice by omitting serious discussion of worker safety. It's an oft-trotted-out trade workhorse to note that the phrase, "mad as a hatter," came from early milliners burning out their brain cells working with mercury-based felt sizing chemicals, but it's so oft trotted-out because it's a point of import that cannot be stressed enough: the onus is on the artisan to be vigilant, informed, and cautious about hazards in the workplace. Don't just "open a window, ha-ha," when working with solvent-based chemicals--get yourself a fit-tested mo-effen respirator with the right freaking cartridges and use it, please. Otherwise, well, enjoy your dalliance on that primrose path, but mark my words, that's the road to uncontrollable tremors and three-headed babies and such. There's a prevailing misconception that, because nobody's chained to their sewing machine in a burning shirtwaist factory, and because organizations like OSHA exist and laws are out there on the books, somehow we all live and work in safe environments. We don't, so be alert and tune up your BS-meter when reading reference books that don't adequately address precautionary safety measures. Costuming is fun, but it's a surprisingly dangerous job.

Wow, i think that's the first rant in this blog. Whoops! I try to keep it even-keeled and professional here, but this particular subject really gets me het-up. So...uh, back to your regularly-scheduled book review...



One book that's not useful for technique instruction but is indispensible as a reference for period shapes, research, and inspiration is Susan Langley's Vintage Hats and Bonnets 1770-1970: Identification and Values. It's written for a readership of collectors and dealers in vintage and antique millinery, but it's amazing for theatrical and historical costumers as well. It's divided into chapters by decade, each one beginning with a brief overview of what was going on at the time in fashion and the world in general, followed by pages of photographs and illustrations: period photos, modern photos of surviving period hats, catalogue illustrations, fashion magazine pictures from the time, all kinds of great stuff! My ongoing coal-scuttle bonnet project comes from a resource image in this book.


I also have a number of reprinted period sources in my shop's reference library, of which i'll mention two that are fairly easily obtainable. The first is Millinery for Every Woman, by Georgina Kerr Kaye. The original was published in 1926, but it's been reprinted by Lacis. Of particular use in my class has been the sections on working with velvet as a cover fabric and the extensive chapter at the end on creating garniture shapes from fabric and ribbon.

(Vocab: garniture, noun - an ornamental piece of decor on a hat or garment. Feel free to use this term where you otherwise might use words like "thingamajiggy" or "whatchamacallit" or "doohickey." I found it in a 1920s magazine article on making cockades for cloches and dropped-waist dresses that need an ornamental focal-point and i love it. GARNITURE, a word i have been looking for to no avail for ages!)


Another book we've perused for period shaping and draping techniques is Edwardian Hats: The Art of Millinery, by Mme. Anna Ben-Yusuf, first published in 1909. A good reference source, but also quite fascinating from an anthropological perspective--millinery being one of the trades a woman could respectably earn a living at in the period, the book also features some business advice on how one might run a successful milliner's shop from one's parlor, including information on bookkeeping, business costs, and market trends in hat fashion at the time. The book also includes some catalogue illustrations at the beginning from a publication called Correct Dress: Fall & Winter 1908-09 Cool stuff, if that interests you!

(Incidentally, i am dying to know more about Mme. Ben-Yusuf; all i know is that she was a millinery instructor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NYC at the turn of the century, and in addition to writing this book, she contributed a number of articles and columns to trade journals on hatmaking. I suspect that she was related somehow to the reknowned portrait photographer of the period, Zaida Ben-Yusuf, who maintained a studio in New York for a brief time in the 1890s-1900s. Her surname implies that she and/or her husband were of Arabic descent, but the trade moniker of "Madame Anna" suggests a European connection as well. A French mode of address ("madame") was common in the millinery trade, whether one had any French background or not, to give a fashionable "Parisienne" impression of the milliner to her clients, and "Anna" could be anything from Russian to Greek to Hebrew to Catalan, who knows. The prospect of, speculatively, two women, Anna and Zaida, sisters-in-law, immigrants, both making their living as reknowned and successful artists and artisans in Edwardian New York! Fascinating! Someone write me that as a novel, please. Or perhaps i should get typing and do it myself. Ha! Wow, i digress. You see though why at one point i thought i wanted a PhD in costume history.)


Again with the nerdy-safety-goggley warning: as with any period reference, there are some truly disturbing portions of these books--i had a grim laugh at the section on using gasoline to treat feathers and hat bases--so use your judgment when consulting them for practical advice on technique. Imagine: a millinery studio lit by gaslight, with milliners using gasoline in open containers... Egad.


unluckymonkey asked specifically for online resources, so here are a couple of links:

For an excellent glossary on hatmaking terminology and a wonderfully in-depth sidebar of links on all aspects of millinery, check out Hats UK. It's a website run by the British trade publication The Hat Magazine, and has a forum section for discussions and advice queries as well.

The Village Hat Shop has a wonderful page with links to photos depicting a wide range of millinery subjects, including blocking felt hats, designing hats, dyeing hats, etc.


In a related note, I'm excited that a recent La Bricoleuse article on straw hat rejuvenation got recommended on the Hartford York Hats blog! Dunno how they found me, but i appreciate the shout-out!



Got a favorite hat book, periodical, or website link? Please comment!



Oh, and! Not entirely unrelated, because there's a chapter on hat patterns in it, but i wanted to mention a book i recently bought and am super-excited about: Lion Brand Yarn Vintage Styles for Today: More Than 50 Patterns to Knit and Crochet. Each pattern is introduced with a period photograph or illustration depicting the garment worked and worn by a historically-contemporary model, then a modern photograph of the piece made with modern yarn and worn by a modern model. It's super cool to see, say, a grainy old tintype of a woman sporting a knit cardigan, then that same cardigan worked up today! I have obtained the yarn for my first project from this book--a cap-sleeve shrug taken from a 1950s original. One caution though: these are not exact reproductions of the original garments and won't result in finished products that will necessarily stand up to "period Nazi" critiquing. They've been modified to take into account modern undergarments and are intended to result in pieces that can be worn currently without period underpinnings like corsetry and such. I do think that from a crafts artisanship perspective, if you needed to create a period piece for a production, one could work backwards from the archival photographs using the patterns as a guide and recreate the antique garment with deductive modifications.

I guess my project of creating knitted spatterdashes (in which i did exactly that, work backward from a photo reference) had its intended effect: namely, getting me excited about expanding my skill at knitwork and crochet!

Here's the (long-awaited, i know) third part of my four-part studio setup series!

Let me first man up and acknowledge that yes, i know i haven't gotten the backstage-sneak-peek of The Lion King up yet--i'm still embroiled in legalese because i don't want to get sued for violating any nondisclosure agreements or illegal photo usage. Disney is big on that. I promise, as soon as i get it straightened it out, it's coming! (I did eventually come through on Cirque de Soleil, did i not?)

For those who haven't been following this series, Part One is here, which addresses the equipment and inventory needs of a typical dyeshop or "wet room," and Part Two is here, which focuses on specific equipment and inventory utilized in leatherworking, distressing, and shoe-related areas.

As for why i first sat down to develop these lists, some background:

The MFA program where i teach allows the students to focus in a range of non-design areas of professional costuming: draping, tailoring, craftwork, or costume shop management. This semester's management seminar topic is "Sourcing and Supplies"--this is not just how and where to find everything from a spoon busk to an industrial shoe-patching machine, but also strategies for addressing shop supply inventories, storage, etc.

Earlier in the semester I gave a guest-lecture on the appurtenancing of a crafts space. The thrust of the matter was, what if a managerial candidate was hired and coming into a space where s/he had to either set up a crafts shop from scratch, or analyze the existing inventory of a crafts area and do supply ordering for the beginning of a season with no aid from a staff crafts artisan. I am posting a brief overview of what i touched on in a four-part series:

Setting up a Dye Shop/Wet Room
Cobbling, Leatherworking, and Distressing Equipment and Supplies
Millinery Equipment and Supplies
Specialized Crafts from Parasols and Purses to Plaster Molds

This post is the third in the series.

Bear in mind that not all craftspeople do millinery; as with the Dyer/Painter, sometimes the Milliner is a separate position within the shop. Many crafts artisans do find themselves responsible for millinery, though, and it is a good skill to hone regardless--often the principles of construction you learn in millinery can help in any number of other area of costuming, whether it be constructing underproppers for ruffs or wire-frames for headdresses or patterning of "propstumes" such as parasol covers and muffs and the like.

The first thing to address is equipment. If you intend to accomodate in-house millinery projects, you will likely need the following:

Head forms/"dolly heads"
Hat steamer
Hat stretcher (manual and/or electric)
Sleeve-arm domestic sewing machine with a zigzag stitch
Crown blocks
Brim blocks
Wire cutters
Needlenose pliers
Pinking shears

You can do without the brim blocks if you don't intend to make felt hats "from scratch"--you can always buy untrimmed plain felt hat shapes from dealers such as Manny's Millinery Supply in NYC. You will still probably want at least a couple of the plain domed wooden crown blocks for stretching buckram or shaping Fosshape on and the like.

You can also use a regular clothing steamer or fiddle around with a steam iron if need be, rather than invest in a hat steamer, but they do make hat steaming far more convenient and easy. Dolly heads are as necessary to hatmaking as dress forms are to draping, and skimping by substituting styrofoam headforms can be disastrous, as some of the chemicals and heat-processes used in millinery can melt styrofoam! I like to have a sleeve-arm domestic with zigzag accessible because it allows you to do some of your construction by machine (particularly edging brims with wire). Traditional milliners would probably have a heart attack over that, but in theatre sometimes you have to sacrifice handwork for speed.

In terms of inventory of "consumables," things that are depleted and replenished as hat projects come through the shop, here is a master list to get started with:

Buckram and double-buckram
Baby flannel/domette
Icewool
Low-loft quilt batt
Milliner's wire: white/black, light/medium/heavy weight
Tie-wire or joiners for milliner's wire
Bias tapes
Millinery & curved needles
Premade linings (dyeable!)
Milliner's grosgrain (100% cotton)
Various trims (flowers/ribbons/feathers)
Combs/horsehair/toupee clips
T-pins
Milliner’s glue (Solvent-based, "MagnaTac" is one brand)
Felt and straw
Sizing
Fosshape/thermoformable felt

Most of these items can be purchased from online suppliers. I feed my inventory orders for icewool and domette into my shop's yearly master order from Whalley's in the UK, but that's certainly not mandatory practice.

Note that this list is to be treated as suggestions, a jumping-off point. Also be aware that if the dimensions and ventilation of your craft space are limited, you may wish to avoid all products that would require the use of respirators. If you do use solvent-based sizing and adhesives that require respirators, be aware that OSHA requires you to have a training program in place for all employees that will need to use respirators. When ordering sizing and adhesives, make sure you always ask for the MSDS. You need to have them on file, and they have a lot of good information that will help make decisions like what types of protective gloves and respirator filters to purchase.

Keep your eyes open for the final installment in this series, coming soon! It'll cover a wide catch-all range of topics, everything from jewelry supplies to purse-frames!

Here's the second part of my four-part studio setup series, but first i should give you guys a heads-up on a couple of very exciting things i've got coming up.

First up will be an in-depth report on the exhibit, What We Wore in North Carolina, a huge exhibit at the NC Museum of History in Raleigh, the first installment (of a planned two) of which just opened and runs through February 19, 2007. The exhibit covers over 200 years of fashion and reputedly has an excellent collection of antique pieces. I'll let you know all about it!

And second, admittedly exponentially cooler: I've swung backstage access to the wardrobe department of The Lion King. Reportage will be most assuredly forthcoming late next week. I'm so excited i might as well be doing the pee-dance. I did work on the rebuild of Julie Taymor's King Stag that the American Repertory Theatre did a few years back, and at that time i had the singular opportunities of being able to observe milliner Denise Wallace rebuilding those hats with the then-new thermoformable felt Fosshape, and myself refurbishing masks Taymor herself built originally around twenty years ago. Being able to see inside Taymor's TLK designs, particularly the ones that came out of the Michael Curry Design Studio...wow. I can't wait!


Now, to return to my series about setting up a crafts studio, today's focus is on shoe repair, leatherworking, and costume distressing supplies. ( Read more... )

Lastly, unrelated to upcoming posts here or setting up a studio, I recommend checking out Entwinements, the blog of the shibori studio of Karren K. Brito in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She's got a ton of really informative in-depth posts about her shibori artwear creations. Fascinating, creative, inspiring stuff!

So, i don't feel like i can call this a tutorial, because this adhesive is fairly new to the theatre industry and definitely new to me. It was first recommended in the ACTS FACTS newsletter back in 2003 as a safer substitute for the carcinogenic solvent-based shoe-rubbering adhesive, Barge, by safety expert Monona Rossol. Ms. Rossol is reknowned for her work in furthering safety education among artists and craftspeople and is the author of many reference books on the subject, including The Health & Safety Guide For Film, TV, & Theater. Our company has recently acquired 5 gallons of the 1812, and i decided to test it out and see how it works!

1812 looks like a white glue--water-based, runny--but as it dries it goes through several phases, one of which is kind of slimy and weird like the floaty egg bits in egg drop soup, and finally ends up as firm rubber. I don't know where to tell you to purchase it easily--i know that we got it wholesale straight from the manufacturer, which is UPACO, a division of Worthen Industries. I predict that this will be one of those products that, like Foss Manufacturing's group of thermoformable plastics and felts, quickly becomes purchasable from retail businesses that cater to the entertainment industry, like Manhattan Wardrobe Supply and Backstage Hardware & Theatre Supply.

So, here's my "guinea pig" pair of boots:



( ten more pictures illustrating what i discovered... )

It doesn't matter if you are using non-toxic household (or "union") dyes like Rit--you need to protect yourself and your shop from airborne dye particles! If OSHA regulations don't motivate you or the fear of health damage to your respiratory system, consider your product. Airborne dyestuff will leave spots on damp fabric sometimes even days after you measured out the powder.

Most of us who are independent artisans or theatre artists cannot afford high-tech particulate-protection equipment like airtight laboratory-quality glove boxes, so i present to you a quick overview of the next best thing: home-made dyeboxes.

( photos and how-to info )

And, an unrelated blog recommendation: print & pattern, which features a lot of inspiring imagery for potential silkscreens, blockprints, and other textile surface-design projects. Check it out!