Top Five Blog Posts - 15th Anniversary retrospective!

 

 June 15th marks the 15th anniversary of La Bricoleuse! 

LB started out as a blog over on Livejournal (2006-2017), relaunched here on Blogspot, branched out to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, and finally expanding to a YouTube channel in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that time, i've worked on the production of costumes for Playmakers Repertory Company, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Carolina Ballet, the Public Theatre, Parsons-Meares Ltd., the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Shilling Shockers television show, Troika Entertainment, the Museum of Science Fiction and more. 

Posts from this blog about that work have led to articles published in journals like HATalk, Stage Directions and Theatre Design & Technology. Our research on 3D fabrication for costume production was featured in 3D Printing Basics for Entertainment Design by Anne McMills (2017). I wrote a chapter for the anthology, Theatre Artisans and Their Crafts. The book A History of the Theatre Costume Business: Creators of Character (co-authored with Triffin and Gregory Morris) will release September 30, 2021!

All in all, it's been a great fifteen years.

In this piece, let's look back at the top five blog posts since 2006!

1. The #1 blog post of all time across both blog platforms is on Dye Vat Sourcing. This question gets asked all the time in Facebook groups, Reddit communities, Discord channels, old-school email discussion lists, you name it. Someone gets the funding for a dye vat and realises they have no idea where to buy one. I've yet to make a YouTube video on this topic yet <adds to list> but I did create content on how to clean a dye vat and basic operation training. 

2. Popular blog post #2 is How to Alter a Bra for Better Fit and Support. This post began as a Twitter thread that blew up and went kinda viral (meaning like, a couple thousand Likes, not like, millions). So, I wrote a blog post about it and THAT blew up with views and some great extensive comments. I'm happy to say that I'll be releasing a video version of this post on YouTube as part of the Costube Symposium, August 17-22! Mine will come out August 22.

3. My #3 blog post feature is Leather Straps and Edge Binding. Back at the turn of the millennium, I worked a couple summers as a femme-garment patternmaker for a custom leather studio that catered to the New England kink community. As such, I learned a LOT about production methods for high-quality leather garments and gear, techniques I teach my graduate students in my "masks, mascots, and armor" class. I also filmed a video version of this post for YouTube.

4. Popular blog post #4 is Resources for Working with Esparterie/Spartre/Willow. Why my blog ranks so high in Google searches on the terms for this rare millinery material is a long (but interesting!) story. If you're intrigued, you can watch the recording of a 2020 conference presentation I gave in 2020 on the material and the inspiring milliner with whose legacy I've been entrusted, Madame Sheeta's Esparterie. If you just want information on the material, check out the blog post linked above. Or, if you're a visual learner, you can skip to the last chapter of that Sheeta video! 

5. The fifth and final popular blog post I'll feature is Ask La Bricoleuse: Design vs. Production MFA Programs. This is part of a series of "frequently asked questions" posts I first shared in 2006, about costume-focus graduate study in the US. The series was so popular that I reposted a revised edition of all of the posts in 2019, of which this linked post is the most visited. I'll be launching a series of video versions beginning in July (2021).

There they are, the top five blog posts from fifteen years of La Bricoleuse! Thank you so much for reading, watching, and commenting on every incarnation of this resource.

Please join me Thursday June 17th at 3pm EDT for my Anniversary Party! I'll be streaming live on YouTube from my home studio, eating snacks and looking back at the past 15 years, taking questions from the chat and hopefully seeing many of you there. Drop in, say hi and have a drink or a snack with me!

 

The old blog on LiveJournal - 2006-2017