Rachel E. Pollock's Blog: La Bricoleuse aggregate and more..., page 31

Decorative Arts class: gloves and period accessories!

I've been lax at sharing student projects, probably due to having taken up Instagram, but hopefully this post will remedy that a bit. This semester's graduate crafts course is Decorative Arts, but what that tends to mean is a catch-all for craft topics that don't fit neatly into one of my other three classes (Millinery, Dyeing/Surface Design, Masks/Armor). So far, we've made it through two projects--gloves and period accessories. Check them out!




Top: ultrasuede gloves with bead...

3D printed bear mask for Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls

This past couple weeks, i've been working with the undergraduates of the Kenan Theatre Company to produce a bearskin cape costume for their upcoming play, Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls. When the costume designer, Ashley Owen, expressed a desire for the cape to feature a hood which incorporated a bear head mask structure (kind of like a bearskin rug), i thought this would be a great opportunity for us to partner with the Research Hub on campus and 3D print the base structure for this pi...

New OSHA HazCom labeling standards: our label station

So, you may or may not have heard about OSHA's new labeling standards for products you stock in your workplace. This info is going to be of particular interest to those running a dye facility--especially if you stock dyes for synthetics and color-removal chemicals--and for anyone who runs a craft shop, paint shop, etc.

If you haven't heard about this new regulation, there's a great FAQ about it here.

Our Environmental Health & Safety department has been helpful in terms of getti...

Alumni interviews: Amy A. Page, Costume Director & Professor

I've got another installment of the alumni interviews to share today, this time with Amy A. Page (MFA '10), Costume Director and Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.




labricoleuse : For a bit of background for the readers, tell us about the department in which you teach—how many shows, how many students (rough guess is fine), anything that communicates the nature of the academic and theatrical-performance context for your job.

AAP: University o...

Book review: The Spoonflower Handbook

Last week, i had the good fortune to attend the book release party for The Spoonflower Handbook: A DIY Guide to Designing Fabric, Wallpaper, and Gift Wrap, by Stephen Fraser, Judi Ketteler, and Becka Rain.

At the Spoonflower book release party!

A photo posted by Rachel E. Pollock (@repollock) on Sep 3, 2015 at 3:45pm PDT

I bought the book (as one does at such things) and have since been poring over it with the intent to write about it here, and i suppose that i should begin with a few discl...

Book Giveaway! Stencil Craft - Techniques for Fashion, Art, & Home by Margaret Peot

Remember my recent review of Stencil Craft - Techniques for Fashion, Art, & Home by Margaret Peot?

Margaret has generously offered to partner up with me to run a giveaway! If you'd like to win a copy of this excellent new resource book for stencil techniques, comment with a link to either a stencil project you really like (hint: check Pinterest!) or a pic of one that you yourself have made.

You have until 5pm EST one week from today--September 2nd--to enter! Then, we'll choose a ran...

Book review: Stencil Craft - Techniques for Fashion, Art, & Home by Margaret Peot

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.




This book is a great new resource for stencil techniques and processes, particularly for textile artists and costumers. Margaret is not only a painter, illustrator, and artist, but...

3D printed skull mask!

I've been doing some other 3D printing projects in tandem with the librarians at the Research Hub here on the UNC-CH campus, and today's entry is maybe my favorite of the results: a 3D printed mask!



Back in 2012, then-grad-student Candy McClernan created this skull sculpture (left) to make a traditional leather mask (right).


She also did versions in Wonderflex (top) and papier mache (bottom). So when i embarked on this project, i thought it'd be cool to use the same sculpture for th...

Museum of Science Fiction Replica #1: 2001 Flight Attendant

This past spring, we entered into a very exciting partnership with the in-development Museum of Science Fiction.

This article gives a pretty good overview of how we wound up getting involved, and you can watch a brief video about it at this link.

So, this post is a behind-the-scenes photoessay overview of what this first project entailed.


Graduate student (now alumna '15) Denise Chukhina adjusts the jacket.
One challenge of this project was building the costume for a display form instead of a...

Books to check out

Wow, i've not posted since June. Embarassing! But, i left the state to work a contract job for the month of July, so that's my excuse.

I received a couple of review copies of books that i'd like to mention today, not strictly within the focus of this blog but close enough that i feel the readers would want to know they exist. I've got some more in-depth reviews coming of other titles, but this is more of a PSA, i guess.

Dress, Fashon, and Technology: From Prehistory to the Prese...