FAAIC. Go ahead Susan. Hi everyone. Excuse me. Welcome to today's webinar. It's the last of our Lollapalooza and I'm really glad to see as many people as we have. So thank you and remember Connecting to Collections Care is a free training and web resources for all types of smaller cultural organizations. So we're happy to provide this service for you. If you need reliable answers for problems with your collections, you can always go to the Collections Care online community forum. You need to be a registered member but that doesn't cost you anything and it takes a few minutes to post a question. You can read questions without being a member. And we have, this is the website. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. And you can see all of the past webinars from Connecting to Collections and from Connecting to Collections Care in the archives. And you can contact me anytime. This is my email address. And there's a new email list that's going to be starting the C2CC Announce. And it's just to make announcements, not as a discussion list. So we look forward to that. And finally, in May we're going to have a webinar on hazardous materials and collections. And in June we're going to have one that's been asked for for many years and that's on caring for firearms in your collections. So today we're going to talk about mannequins. And our speakers are Jill Morena and April Voskamp. So I'm going to turn this over to them. Hello. Good afternoon. Welcome to our webinar. Much to do about mannequins making the perfect form. I'm Jill Morena and I'm April Voskamp. And we'll be discussing our experiences here at the Ransom Center, which is a humanities research center at the University of Texas at Austin that has collections and rare books and manuscripts, art, performing arts, film, and photography. And today we'll be talking about techniques and approaches in mannequin making that we've learned and applied over the years to various projects and exhibitions involving the film and theater costumes in the institution's collection. And we have a lot of ground to cover so let's get started. It's really no secret that exhibitions of dress, costume, and fashion are more popular than ever with audiences. You can see the jump in the number of exhibitions just within the last 10 years. And the numbers you see on the screen are not even taking into account exhibitions at smaller institutions, non-fashion focused shows, or exhibitions that may include only a handful of costumes. So the numbers are actually much higher. Perhaps you are someone now being charged for the first time with preparing garments in your collection for display due to the increased demand to see this kind of material. And there's a good reason for this popularity. Everyone has an entry point of reference or some kind of emotional connection to clothing. And garments make for compelling objects in the gallery. As educational institutions, museums are in a position to teach their audiences about the meanings of clothing beyond our own way of dressing or everyday experience with wearing or purchasing clothing. Displaying costume may seem deceptively simple, just buy a mannequin and throw it on, right? But if you're here watching this webinar, you know or you've heard that this is not the case. The tasks can seem daunting, but remember that this type of work is very collaborative. April and I are standing on the shoulders of others and have learned from many experienced conservators, talented volunteers and students and several excellent resources. And we will show you today different methods and approaches we've learned and hope that they will help you in your upcoming efforts. So I will briefly go over our presentation outline. We'll start by assessing a garment for display. Then we'll talk about choosing a mannequin style and the advantages and disadvantages. Then, perhaps most importantly, we'll discuss taking garment measurements and translating that to a mannequin or form. We'll show you how to modify an existing mannequin and the additive and subtractive methods, which is basically building onto an existing form or changing the shape of an existing form. We'll go over creating a mannequin through subtractive methods or sculpting a mannequin from foam. And we'll also discuss building up a mannequin, which is creating a mannequin or partial supports with a material called foch shape. Then we'll go over underpinnings, which provide support for the garment. Talk about correct interpretations. And lastly, we'll discuss best practices for handling and moving garments. So we'll talk about dressing the mannequin, how to transport it into the gallery or space where it will be exhibited and installing it into the gallery. And then after our presentation, we'll have a link to resources for materials and display practices and methods. So the initial big question, can I display this is first and foremost. So to begin, place your garment flat on a clean, preferably covered table so that you're not putting any stress on the costume or introducing any dust or other debris. Make sure your hands are clean and dry or wear gloves. Examine both the inside and the outside and differentiate between problems and weight-bearing areas and what may be simply cosmetic concerns. For example, holes not on a seam, on the surface, are generally not structural problems. So what do we mean by weight-bearing areas? These are areas that take the brunt of the force of gravity and hold the garment together. So places like waistline, shoulder seams, or embellished areas that exert more force on the foundation garment or the foundation fabric when worn. 1920s gowns are notorious for this, which can have thousands of beads sewn to fragile ground fabrics such as chiffon or silk. So during this examination process, you will want to keep notes of places that are problematic or that will require extra support. This costume has a very light, thin cotton-lawn bodice attached to a very heavy, full, floor-length velvet skirt. So this costume could definitely be affected by display and could result in the weak spots and holes at the waistline worsening and pulling at that thin cotton bodice. This costume probably shouldn't be displayed without some sort of conservation intervention or serious support. The garment at the right has both tide lines from water damage and a hole right at the top of the shoulder seam, on which much of the weight of the garment hangs. An area like this could really be a deal-breaker in terms of display options. Next, you want to consider closures. Zippers, snaps, hooks, and eyes. Are they loose, broken, or rusted? And if so, can they be reattached or replaced? These decisions will, of course, depend upon the policies of your institution. How much original material can you replace or how much intervention is acceptable? For garments with structural concerns, you will need to consider how much time and money you can devote to tackling the problem. Solutions will depend upon staff resources, time, and exhibition budget. Perhaps you can consult a conservator who can stabilize a troubling area or can make suggestions for the safest display alternative. Or you may be able to figure out an in-house solution or opt to display the garment flat. Overall, you have to ask, how valuable is this particular garment to your display or to your costume collection as a whole? These are all questions to tackle before even considering a mannequin or dress form. In the last 300 years, even for men, silhouettes have changed dramatically, especially in western fashion. For example, looking at an illustration of a sleeveless evening gown from the 1870s and comparing it to a costume from the film Gone with the Wind made in the 1930s, you can see similarities, but you can also see how different they are. Research is crucial in determining how your garment was worn and how it looked. And the types of resources you will consult, whether those are fashion magazines, ethnographic studies, or films, for example, will depend upon the clothing in your collection. Another thing to consider during this time is what you wish to highlight about the costume, is this will determine what type of mannequin you need to make or purchase. For example, for a dance costume, are you focusing on highlighting the construction and fabrication of the costume or recreating how the dress was worn in performance? Keep in mind that a single garment can tell many different stories, and this will depend on your particular collection, archival research, and the overall exhibition theme, affecting ultimately how you want to display the costume. So we're going to discuss now three types of mannequins, full body mannequins, headless dress forms, or invisible forms, and these are also sometimes called floating forms. So the obvious advantage to full body mannequins is that they have heads, arms, legs, and feet for support of head gear, sleeves, pant legs, and footwear, and they can be modified if needed. However, a modification of fiberglass requires some serious skills with power tools, and we're not going to talk about this, but if you're interested in knowing more, please consult the 2013 webinar, Mounting Garments for Display, on the Connecting to Collections Care website, which gives many examples. Disadvantages of full body mannequins are that they are usually too tall and muscular for historic clothing and accessories, and the poses can be anachronistic. For example, if you have an 1880s dress on a mannequin with one hip thrust out and the hands on the hips, it might only damage the dress, but it's going to look very wrong. So here we can see an obvious example. This too tall athletic mannequin makes costumes worn by actor Robert De Niro look like he's waiting for a flood, as they say. You can see this in the raised pant hem and the sleeves do not reach the wrists. There's also a bit of a disconnect when you look at this mannequin and try to picture Robert De Niro the actor or the film character. This mannequin has too many defined features to invoke a well-known person. So this is an example of one of the pitfalls of using a full body mannequin. Headless dress forms are one of the oldest types of mannequins in use since the 19th century. They are classic looking, they're easy to modify because they're usually covered with fabric that you can sew into, and you can escape the facial features dilemma. Of course, it's a less dynamic look, it's more static, and it becomes an added challenge to display headgear or other accessories, unless you buy or make arms with articulated fingers, which can be challenging or expensive. Invisible or floating forms have become quite popular in the last few decades. They place the garment front and center without potentially distracting visible appendages, and they can be very dramatic in the gallery. Disadvantages are, again, more challenging display of accessories, and the construction can be time consuming and involves several steps. Other questions to consider, do you want a unified look? This will depend on your budget. Can you afford to buy or make the same type of mannequin for everything? If not, can you supplement with other types of mannequins or donations from local retail stores? This can be an option. What is very important to keep in mind is that planning and fabricating always takes more time than you think. You will need time to tweak and adjust, and there is often lots of trial and error involved in creating something. In terms of purchasing, once we tried to order mannequins in October for an arrival time in January, and this could not be fulfilled because of orders by retail stores for the Christmas season, and we had to go to a less desirable plan B as a result. So be prepared to add an extra week or two to your calendar for ordering and preparation. So once you decide that you can display a costume, the next step will be taking measurements. This is very important prep work before considering a mannequin. Here are some things to remember. Never assume the historic clothing is symmetric. Don't be tempted to measure only half a waistline and then double it. The measurement may be different on the other side and you'll end up with inaccuracies. Secondly, interior measurements for the chest, waist, hip, and arm side or arm hole will be the most accurate. If for some reason you cannot safely take the measurement from inside the garment, you can take an outside measurement and then subtract an inch. And then always measure from closure to closure. For example, if a hook and I are placed one inch inside the edge of the garment, measure only to the hook on one side and the eye on the other. The actual garment may be 26 inches at the waist, but the measurement for mannequin purposes would be 24 inches. Here we have a numbered diagram detailing the most important measurements to take for your garment. Websites for most commercially made mannequins usually provide only bust, waist, and hip measurements and overall mannequin height. And these are important, but there are other measurements that are just as crucial. So if you find a mannequin that matches these four basic measurements, don't think that your work is done. Take measurements one through nine to avoid surprises later. Number one, the neckline. Number two, across the shoulders. Number three, neckline to bust. Number six, bust point to bust point, which actually on our diagram is a little bit lower than where it should actually be. We just lowered it from number five, the bust line, just so you could see what we were measuring there. And number seven, shoulder to waist. These all can differ from your costume to the dress form. Be sure you take these measurements before ordering or accepting a mannequin or dress form. You can always ask the company if they can provide these measurements to you. For garments without a defined waist seam or bust starts, you may have to guesstimate the measurement. Well worn garments often have fabric molded to a certain body shape in areas like the bust. So clues can be found at worn areas inside the garment. Measurements 10 through 14 will be useful if you were either ordering a full body mannequin or for making arms and underpinnings, which we'll talk about later. So now you're a task with translating a garment made or altered for a specific individual to a standardized idealized size dress form. For example, if we translate the measurements of our costume to this commercial dress form, you can see that the form is longer wasted than our dress and the breasts are percure. The bust point to point line on the form shows where the actual bust line is and the line marked bust is the bust line of our costume. So you can see that it's a little bit lower. The costume waistline is higher than the mannequin's actual waist, which is the narrowest area on the form between the chest and the hips. If the shoulder to waistline measurement of your garment is shorter than the measurement on the form, it may be good to ask the company for the rib cage measurement to make sure that area is small enough to accommodate the new waistline of your garment. You will be able to change the shape and location of the bust waist and hip through padding, which we'll talk about in a bit. The best practice to avoid surprises is to make sure that your chosen mannequin is at least two inches smaller than your garment to allow room for you to build up and create your measurements. And while taking preliminary measurements will lessen the need for handling, be prepared to try your garment on its new form more than once. Now we're going to talk about ways to modify a dress form by adding to it. You may be asking yourself at this point, why not simply order a mannequin with the exact measurements I need? Well, human bodies are not made from fiberglass or paper mache. They are soft and have give, so padding is not only safer for the costume, but it looks more natural. Another reason to not set your hopes on a complete customized form is that they can be quite expensive and can take several months to receive. If you have a closet full of mannequins, you can usually find a use for most of them and we'll talk about this throughout the presentation. Keep in mind that many commercially made mannequins are made with non-archival materials and you'll need to protect your garment with some sort of barrier material. And you can use stockinette, readily available pantyhose, or marvel seal, which is an archival foil barrier. We're going to talk about examples with stockinette. Now we will go through some relatively easy ways to modify a dress form from the top down. These shoulder modifications come from Laura Flecker's book A Practical Guide to Costume Mounting, which is now back in print and it is a great resource. And although many methods in this book require quite a bit of dressmaking skill, others are easy to do with a beginner skill set. You'll need museum board, muslin fabric, and polyester batting, and you'll see that you can do a lot just with these few materials. So why acid-free d-size muslin board and batting? Naturally occurring acid and paper or chemicals involved in the processing of textiles or fibers will not transfer to your garment if these assets are removed. And these materials have longevity and can be used again and again on other dress forms. And if the materials of your dress form aren't archival, these can help create a barrier between your garment and the form. This method can help you work with what you have. In this particular instance, we've been able to extend the shoulders of an adolescent teen mannequin to better fit a small sized woman's dress. You can see on the finished costume that these shoulder extensions create just as good looking a shoulder curve and termination as those on a manufactured dress form. So you're going to need two pieces, a rectangular piece and a circular piece. So measure from the neckline of the form to the edge of the shoulder, adding the number of inches you need for your shoulder width. Looking at the photo at the top left, let's say you need to add one more inch to bring your shoulder length to six inches. Next, you measure the width of the armhole of your costume and then cut out a circle with that diameter, seen on the bottom right. Measure half the circumference of the circle, which in this case is 10 and a half inches. So this measurement will be the length of your rectangular shoulder piece, seen in the top right photo, and the six inch neckline to shoulder measurement will be the width, seen in the top middle photo. Once you've cut these sizes on the board, sew them between two pieces of muslin, leaving at least an inch for a seam allowance. Sew the circular piece to the seam allowance on the length side of the rectangular piece, as you can see in the top photo, and then you can sew this piece directly to the form. Fill in the gap between the extended shoulder in the form with polyester batting, thinning out and tapering the batting to the torso as you need to, and then you can sew it to the form to secure. You can use this same method in creating a smaller shoulder extension without a circular arm socket piece. This eye-shaped piece is sewn directly to the form and can connect directly to a soft padded arm, which we'll talk about later. It's sturdy and elegant and melts perfectly with the shoulder curve of the form. Next we'll talk about bust modification, which can be achieved with the same materials, muslin and polyester batting, and the addition of cotton or polyester stockinette. On the right you can see that we're widening the bust point to point measurement on the form and adding more fullness on the sides of the bust, so you can manipulate the bust shape in silhouette with batting. A quick word about stockinette, it's good to have all three wits around, but you can always modify a large wits stockinette to create a smaller size by sewing down the middle, trimming the excess away, and creating smaller tubes if need be. You can find stockinette through medical or archival supply companies. Concerning batting, the looser felted batting seen below on the left is good for adding layers in volume and smoothing out hard edges, whereas the more opaque batting on the right is more condensed and can hold shape better over time. So you want to start by cutting out batting and concentric ovals to build up and create a natural looking breast shape, and you can sew these layers together, building from the largest foundation layer to the smallest. One inch or half inch thick polyester batting can be used as is, or can be separated into thinner layers to build up a less thick, potentially lumpy looking shape. We're showing an example of three concentric pieces on the left, some of which are thinned out. On the lower right is a pretty substantial buildup with non thinned out pieces, which may come in handy if you need those extra inches in the bust line, and if your costume is fairly heavy and will compress the batting. In any case, you want to feather out and soften any hard edges of the ovals or circles, because you don't want any harsh or sharp lines to be clearly visible underneath the costume. You can pin and sew the batting directly to the form. On the right is an example of a fairly substantial buildup, extending and raising the bust for a 1950s pointed bra type silhouette. And you always want to cover the batting with stockinette or muslin, because the fibers of the batting can get caught in your garment. You can get really creative and versatile with padding. Here we did a bit of gender reassignment. We needed an extra male form, but we didn't have one. So we filled in the area between the breasts of the female form with a 34 inch bust and padded out the chest area to a 38 inch male chest. It made a curvy or 24 inch waistline to a straight or 28 inch waist. This was appropriate given the costume was for a cross dressing pirate character worn by Robert De Niro. This filling in of the space between the breasts and flattening of the chest can also help create a boyish 1920s bust line. Next, adding to the hips. I learned this method of cutting out shapes that mimic hip muscles from conservative caravarnel. She encouraged us to cut out batting in teardrop shapes that mimic the gluteus medius and maximus, or the large and small muscles found around the hips and bottom. This looks more natural and will follow the curve of the dress form. Again, you want to feather up the edges. This method is especially good for body skimming gowns, so the hip padding will not look big and lumpy or obvious. Hip padding is especially important when displaying corseted styles when all the flesh is pushed downward from the compressed waistline. So next we'll move on to arms. You can really adapt any existing arm pattern to help create soft padded arms or you can create your own with tissue as long as you have your outer arm length or longest measurement and wrist measurement of the costume. The circumference of the smallest area of very narrow sleeves is also useful to have. You can guesstimate that about halfway down the arm of the costume will be your elbow bend. And again, evidence of wear on your garment can give you clues if it isn't obvious. You can draw in a dart for this elbow bend on the pattern.  Make sure that you sew the batting roll together so that it will not unravel when you're placing it inside the sleeve.  Again, this method is from Lara Flecker's book. Using a slippery polyester or similar fabric for your arm pattern will work better with feeding the arm through the sleeves of the costume. You'll meet less resistance, the slipperier, more slippery fabric you use. And you can finish off the wrist with a fabric covered disc, similar to finishing off the shoulders we discussed before. You want to sew the arms to the form using a cross stitch, which is strong or like an X stitch, which is strong and provides for easy movement when you need to manipulate that arm into a costume. A curved needle is a great tool for sewing on arms or really sewing anything to the curved surface of the form. This will make your life a lot easier. You can get these from specialty fabric stores, stores that carry quilting supplies or medical supply stores. The medical supply needles will be surgical needles, so keep in mind they're very sharp but they work well. An easy and inexpensive way to make arms is with polyethylene pipe insulation. You can find this at any hardware store and it's available in different widths and colors. It already exists in the slightly curved shape of an arm but you can cut and remove a piece at the elbow bend and then adhere with hot glue to create more of an elbow curve if you want. You can see an example of this in the two photos on the top right. Then you can cover the whole thing with batting and stockinette to create a larger circumference if needed and then sew it to the dress form. You can also use rare earth magnets to connect the arms to your form and these are very strong so you have to be careful when working with them. If you want more information about how to do this please contact us but we won't go into the process right now. But this is a great approach for very fragile bodices or jackets as you can place the arms inside the sleeves before dressing and then the arms easily and gently connect to the form as you can see in the top photo. You can make quick and easy net supports for costume sleeves with a lot of weight and volume. Depending upon how much support and volume you need you can double or triple the circumference measurement of the garment sleeve. Create supports using a running stitch and then pull the thread to gather the net which you can see on the upper left or make big accordion pleats seen on the bottom left. You can stitch these net supports straight onto the padded arm and you want to use many layers if the sleeve is especially heavy because the weight will compress the netting. Cover the net in a polyester fabric if the lining of the costume sleeve is fragile. So what if you only have a one to two day or one to two week display and you don't want to or you can't devote a lot of time to modifying a mannequin? Most of the approaches we've talked about can be achieved with rolls of acid-free tissue or nylon net to help support sleeves or pant legs expand waistlines or bust lines or add to the hips. You can generally do this very quickly and easily in a pinch. Again if the interior of the costume is fragile opt for using tissue instead of net as uncovered netting can be abrasive. Next we'll move on to removing material from an existing mannequin. In particular we're going to look at the problem of reshaping shoulders. In this instance we couldn't just ask the mannequin to drop its shoulders to create a sloping 1830s posture and we couldn't close up the back of our costume because we needed about an inch more space to do so as you can see in the bottom photo. This is what you will find when you uncover a Stockman brand form. It's got a layer of batting and then a hard paper mache foundation. So remove but make sure you keep the batting an external cover. You can peel it back from the seams keeping the seam lines intact. One of our great exhibition preparators here at the Ransom Center, Wendell Folk, determined that we needed to remove a one inch pie slice from the neckline to just above the bust in order to drop that shoulder. You could also use this method to narrow a shoulder span and then build up with batting.  A rotary tool was used for speed and precision and Wendell had the knowledge and comfort level with power tools. However if you're wary of using such a tool you can also just use a hand saw. So after you cut out the shape you're just going to remove the material in between. In the photo on the left you can really see the difference in the shoulder slope and we used Tyvek tape to hold the shoulders in place. When the rotary tool was used the friction against the paper caused a real bad burning smell so it's important to let the form air out for several days to allow for off-gassing. The original undercover batting and dress form cover was re-sewn along the seam lines covered with another exhibition ready cotton stretch jersey cover and arms were created as you can see in the photo on the right the dress now closes up beautifully. So a quick word on mannequin covers. Obviously you want to have something that looks finished and beautiful for exhibition. You can buy mannequin covers ready made. These are easily transferable from one mannequin to another and are generally elasticized at the bottom hem. Just be sure you wash rinse and dry the covers thoroughly before you use making sure no dyes migrate from the cover. You can always wet the fabric and do a blot test before using it with your collection garment. You can also create your own from stretch jersey or ribbed fabric. Want to create a pattern with the seam to seam measurements of your dress form sew the two pieces together and voila you have a cover you can slide over your dress form. You can then fit the cover to the form with darts at the bust or at the back or both. Or you can modify that pattern and only cover the exposed areas not the whole form. This is especially helpful when you have barely any room to spare between your costume and your finished form. Here we see only the neckline shoulders and chest covered with fabric. You can stretch the fabric to fit snugly on the form pin it in place and then sew the bottom hem of the cover straight to the form. One of our conservators is a great pattern maker and she calculated the top and bottom circumference of the neckline seen at the bottom right and created this pattern for an exposed neck on a dress form. Okay so now we're going to talk about creating a form using ethyl foam or polyethylene. So the first thing you want to do after you've taken the measurements from your garment is to trace out those measurements in the shape of a form onto the front of the ethyl foam which you can see in the photo to the left. So after I trace that out I also mark out where I think the chest or the bust will be and also the waist and then I mark at the bottom of the piece of foam where the groin area will be. Then you want to turn the piece of foam onto its side and you want to transfer transfer or sort of bring over those measurements from the front onto the side so that you've got a side view of the form. I definitely recommend using an ethyl foam knife but really a nice sharp blade or a utility blade works well. I've used Ulfa blades in the past and they're great. I'd also like to stress that you practice carving on a small piece of ethyl foam first unless you've got some carving skills already under your belt. It's very helpful to practice carving before you carve out the form that you'll be using for your garment. Now what you want to do is cut out one side of the foam that you've traced onto the front as you can see in the photo to the left. On the other side of the traced form you just want to cut about halfway down into the foam and not fully through like I did on the other side. That's to prevent you cutting off the form that you traced onto the side as you can see in the photo on the right. So once you've cut halfway through the traced form on the front you want to turn it on its side and then cut away the foam that isn't part of the form that you traced. So after you've got your foam figure cut out you want to go along the front and the back and just take off any edges that you see. You're also going to round off the shoulders and create a waist. It's really important that you're keeping proportions in mind and so depending on whether you're doing a male or a female form it's going to be very different. So if it's a male it's going to have broad shoulders it'll have a larger back. If it's a female of course it will have a bust and it will have a tapered waist. So after you've done this next you're going to want to cut out a half moon or crescent shape below the head to create a neck like the slide in the right. Now you're going to spend some time sculpting out the back and making sure that if it's a female form you've got a sloping back you want a very tapered waist and small rounded shoulders. You can also come in on the sides and cut away the foam to create a bust. I also find it very helpful to cut all the way around the waist which helps me keep a centered line so that I know that the front and the back waist and hips will be symmetrical. I also draw a line from the chest or just below the neck down to the groin so that I can make sure that everything is in proportion and again symmetrical and then you can turn it around and start to carve out some foam in the back to create some buttocks. Now you're just going to fine tune the figure so that it fits the costume. Definitely try to be careful not to cut away too much of the foam and this is just something that takes practice and a lot of patience.  So here are a few photos of patting out a carved FFM form so just like a commercial form you can add batting to the areas you need and then use stockinette to keep it in place and you can tack with stitches the batting to the stockinette to keep it from moving around. And this is an interesting approach designed by Dennis LaRouche that we will not completely describe but you can see the approach is basically tracing out a front facing and profile silhouette onto F foam planks and then intersecting those two silhouettes together. You can build out the gaps created which you can see in the second photo with the pieces cut away from your profile forms. So the other two that is where you actually start building up the gaps that are left between those two intersecting pieces. So you can build out the gaps created with pieces cut away from your profile forms that are just left over. FFM adheres to itself with heat and just be sure you're in a well ventilated area if you do this or you can affix pieces to the form with hot glue. These are photos of the first few stages but you can see how quickly you can achieve a pretty decent looking torso shape in just a few steps and then you can fine tune your form from there. So this technique is discussed in the compendium museum mannequins which is in our resource list but the original article can be found in the 1995 spring issue of the textile conservation newsletter. Now we'll talk about creating a mannequin with Foss shape. So it is Foss shape. It's just a name for a felted polyester material and it shrinks to the shape of a mold when you heat it. It's a material that's used a lot in theater for head gear and props. The pros are that it's really easy to work with in shape and it's a lot less messy than using other materials such as duct tape. It's also really easy to sew into both the heated and the non-heated fabric. So the heated Foss shape gets really rigid and the non-heated is very soft and pliable. It's also an archival material. The con is that it can be very expensive depending on the project you're working on. So if you're talking about making an entire form made out of Foss shape that can get really costly. However if you're just thinking about doing a leg or arm supports then it would be a great material to work with. It's available in two thicknesses 300 and 600. We recommend using the 600 weight for making mannequins. The materials you'll need for Foss shape are obviously a mold of some sort or dress form or a mannequin arm or leg. You'll need either a hot air gun which works well shown in the picture here or a handheld steamer and a professional one would be best. Lastly you'll need some tissue paper if you want to create a pattern for a mannequin. So you'll want to first make a pattern for the front and back of the dress form. This is similar to the mannequin covers we talked about earlier except now you're going to add five inches to each measurement. So five inches to the neckline shoulder chest waist hip and overall length measurement. Once you've cut the pattern in Foss shape sew together with a single seam up the back for a leg which you can see in the bottom right photo and you can sew it up the sides to make a dress form. So you want to make sure that the pattern fits loosely over the form or whatever your mold is. The pattern on the dress form on the left is too tight fitting. This was one of the first Foss shape forms that we made and it will not work very well. You want to be sure the pattern is loose like the legs on the right so that the Foss shape will shrink down and contract. The more it shrinks the sturdier it will become. You're going to cover all the areas of the Foss shape with your heat source either the hot gun or the handheld steamer. If you're using a hot air gun just make sure that you don't get too close to the Foss shape because if you do the heat will actually create little holes which you can see in the bottom picture. It's the equivalent of burning it. So if possible you should cut off a small section of the Foss shape and test it with the hot gun to see how close or how far you need to be with it to prevent that burning. A hot air gun works really well but the steamer can also provide more evenly distributed heat. Then you'll see the Foss shape begin to shrink and contract with that heat and it will become stiff. So when you're finished heating you'll cut the mold with a single seam and can whip stitch it closed up the back. If you want to make a smaller size form with a smaller waistline or bust for example the temptation is to simply take away inches from the cut back seam and then close it up. But remember that this will distort the breast area in the front. It will pull the breasts farther apart and if this is what you want that's great but if it's not remove pieces from the side seams to avoid this distortion. So sewing the ethyl foam base or sewing and ethyl foam base into the bottom third provides support and can accommodate a pull for the mannequin. So you can see the ethyl foam base in the top two photos. You can drill or cut a hole in the center of the of the ethyl foam for the pull. So it's important to know that the Foss shape form will not be a completely hard immovable cast so in many cases it will need to be supported somewhat especially if you have a heavy garment. So you can use a longer piece of ethyl foam that extends from the base to further up the torso. Just be sure you round out any hard edges or you can use ridgeline. Ridgeline is a polyester boning that's used in corset making usually and it's used in conjunction with a fabric channel or tube that the ridgeline slides into and then you can sew it to the form at major weight bearing points. So the shoulders, the chest, the waistline, the hips which is shown on the diagram with black lines. It's easiest to sew the ridgeline on the inside of the form before it is closed up. So Foss shape appendages like legs can be affixed to a form with Velcro as seen on the bottom right. So we sewed pieces of Velcro around the base of the legs of the mannequin and then sewed corresponding pieces on the legs to attach. It's also relatively easy to create an invisible form with Foss shape. You can of course do this with a paper mache form but the Foss shape is much more pliable and you can manipulate it and sew through it easily to create the shape you need. So you can see how we've cut away the neck. We created a V to support the costume neckline and then covered the exposed area with black fabric. We covered the interior as well as you'll be able to see this from the outside. So once the exposed areas are covered the form will essentially disappear. A tiny tool that is useful for providing support and aesthetics are insect pins. These are very thin rust proof pins that can be used to keep areas flush with the form as well as provide support for heavier embellishments. Insect pins here are supporting both the neckline and the brooch below the neckline. So be sure to purchase a very thin diameter pin. These pins are very easy to use with the Foss shape material as the pins can go all the way through the form as opposed to a paper mache form. So next we'll talk a bit about underpinnings which is just as important as the form you create. Obviously you're not going to pad out your form to support the shape of a large circular skirt for example. You'll need an undergarment for this. So petticoats, slips and underskirts provide support and correct interpretation of the garment. In creating underpinnings you don't have to go for absolute historical accuracy. What is most important is what is best for the support of the garment. The mantra is keep things simple. This petticoat was based on a period 1870s model but modified and simplified to be both lightweight and offer the best support for the voluminous skirt of the costume. A very talented theater student made this petticoat in three parts. A skirt with net ruffle supports, a simple bustle pad and an over skirt with a train that protects the train of the costume. If you're lucky enough to have access to them, take advantage of talented seamstresses and designers in your area to work on more complicated garments such as this one. Look to local theaters, design departments or tailoring shops. If you can find volunteers who have these skills they're great to have on your project. Again using muslin for underskirts, nylon net for ruffle supports or cotton twill tape for gathering waistlines you can make simple and sturdy petticoats. Use the length and width measurements of your costume skirt and you can double or triple the width of the skirt for the amount of volume needed. You can gather the waistline of the petticoat with twill tape or you can sew a pleated or gathered petticoat to flat twill tape to create less bulk which is useful if your costume has a snug form fitting waistline. The photo at the right shows a box pleat petticoat made by one of our volunteers a great seamstress and she sewed it straight to the form. You can incorporate pleated or gathered net supports for the waistline or hip into a freestanding independent petticoat or you can sew them straight to the form. What kind, how many pleats, how much net and volume you need will depend upon the style of your garment and how much support it needs. So here's an example of net ruffles sewn straight to the form which replaced under a muslin petticoat to give extra support to very fragile areas that received conservation work. Without those ruffles filling in a gap between the costume and the form there's just wouldn't be enough support. If you sew the net straight to the form you can be certain that the ruffles won't move around or shift. This is important when the garment is very heavy and as you can see on the left there's quite a bit of fabric and weight in this costume. Lastly we'll cover handling and moving. So the first thing you need to do is have a plan for how you're going to dress your garment onto the mannequin. How many people are you going to need? For dresses I would say that you need at least three possibly four just depending on how complex or fragile the dress is. I think about our Gone with the Wind dresses here and we sometimes had five people assisting to make sure that the dresses were always protected as they were being dressed onto the mannequins. So you're going to need someone to hold the mannequin form then you're going to need someone to support and guide each of the shoulders and arms into the garment. You'll also need someone supporting the front and back hems or any weak areas that you see. For pants I would definitely say three people. One person again holding the form and two people to guide each of the legs into the support poles and onto the form. On a side note I would also recommend that you don't put the shirt on first. It's much easier to dress the mannequin if you have the pants on first and then you can put the shirt on. So ultimately it really depends on how complex and fragile your garment is that you're working with as to how many people you're going to need. Also while the garment is laying flat and getting ready to be dressed on the form it's a really good idea to support it. Here we just tend to use rolls of tissue but if you've made arm and leg supports that's a great time to go ahead and put them inside. It's also very important that you're wearing either clean gloves or that your hands are clean and washed before you handle the garment. So now you're ready to move into the gallery or exhibition space. You need to consider the route that you're taking. So the doorways and the hallways are they wide enough tall enough is it going into an elevator? If it's going into an elevator will it either fit dressed and on the mannequin or on a flatbed trolley or whatever it is you're moving it on. You need to make sure that whatever it's dressed that whether it's dressed or not that the garment is protected by some kind of barrier material like a muslin, tyvek tissue and always make sure that you're holding on to the neck of the mannequin never the costume. Ideally you should have someone in the front of you just to alert you to any turns coming up and to make sure that there's no upcoming obstacles or anything that's going to get in your way. So before you move the mannequin onto the platform you want to consider how many people you're going to need to move the costume and have a plan for that. Before you do anything else you want to put a barrier material down between the platform and the mannequin. We usually use a mylar sheeting here at the ransom center but you can also use tyvek or tissue. It's also important that you wear some type of booties over your shoes or remove your shoes and just wear your socks. Then you want to weigh down the base or the stand of the mannequin form with some kind of conservation weights or the equivalent thereof to ensure that the form is stable. So once you have everything in place you're going to trim the barrier material. So gently push back the hem about a quarter to a half inch then trim the material and then you can push the hem back into place. So just to conclude we hope that you found this discussion of different approaches and methods helpful but here are just some really sort of big picture important things to remember. No matter which type of dress form or mannequin you choose to modify or make make sure that it's least a few inches smaller than your garment. And again we can stress enough allowing extra time when it is possible the further out planning you can the better for planning creating and modifying each mannequin dress form and also for ordering supplies. You'll always need more time than you think. So we'll open it up to questions now. Thank you so much to everybody for watching and listening. Yes thank you very much for your question. Do you want me to read the questions to you? Yeah that would be lovely. Okay so we'll start at the top. It says sometimes it's easier to be for making busties, bras from the period and filling the cups with batting. What do you think about that? That's interesting. I think that that would be a great approach. It might help you get the right shape that you need. Again you would have to sort of double check that against your actual garment to see if whatever period you know bras that you have or say you know if you're looking at underwear like padded underwear that it actually fits with the measurements of your garment. I mean you could always fill that out and to kind of get an idea of the shape that you might need but I think you always have to sort of go back and see if that will if that will work with the garment that you're going to put on display in the particular measurements of that garment. Okay what about using commercial shoulder pads? You could do that. You would just want to be sure that you have some sort of barrier material between because probably those shoulder pads will not be made of archival material. It won't be archival like say your polyester batting you know and in our resource list we've included some places where you can get polyester batting that doesn't have any other dies or any other additives or sizing added to it. So you just want to be sure when you're using say something like commercial shoulder pads or if you're not really sure where the material came from that you have just make sure that you do have a you know a good archival barrier that's at least between you know your the shoulder pad and your costume. So that's what I would recommend and if you were to use something that you were pretty sure was not made out of archival material and that might start to transfer dies or additives or off-gassing you wouldn't really want to use that for a very long term display. And then on what's the preferred soap to use for washing mannequin fabric materials? Castile soap? Is hand washing best? I don't really have a preferred soap I'm sure there's probably a conservator who could recommend one. I just use the soap that I'm I'm sure doesn't have any fragrance in it any color or any other additives. I think in the past I've just used like seventh generation detergent just something that that you know for sure doesn't have any fragrance any other dies added to it. I also just you know run it through the washing machine again with no soap just to real make sure that it's really rinsed any of that soap is out. So that helps to to just like like run it through give it a couple of rinses before you dry and use the the fabric. And D. Stubbs-Lee says we're about to mount a nurse's operating room uniform that includes a face mask. The mannequin we plan to use has a featureless head and we need to build up a nose in order to have the mask sit correctly. And what do you and it's a Dwarfman mannequin with a stockinette cover what do you recommend for building up the nose? Hmm. Awe shape would work really well however that might be a big purchase to make just for for doing a nose. If it's a Dwarfman style mannequin and if it also has a cover over it I think some of them do come with fabric covers. I mean one thing sorry. It sounds like it does from what she says. So one thing that you could do is you could measure or just approximate you know how how wide or how long of a nose shape that you want you could actually carve it out an ethophone maybe and then put it underneath the cover in the area where you want to have that protrusion coming out with the mask so that it looks natural and then you could actually just sew that you could cover the ethophone piece with stockinette and then you can just insert it underneath the the mannequin cover on the head and then you could just sew it in place. That sounds like something you might have to do a little trial and error on to kind of get the right shape until you're happy with something but that might be yeah or you could if the mask isn't I'm assuming it's just like a light cotton mask you could even like if you don't want to make an investment in ethophone or or faux shape or if you don't have any readily on hand you could maybe even just use tissue like make some tissue wads into into the shape of a nose put it under the cover you know just really sort of build it up with tissue so it's it's fairly hard and you could try that as well. It sounds like something you're yeah you'll have to experiment with a bit. Okay um does faux shape reshape when you heat it again? No it's kind of a one once you've heated it it becomes really it's not as hard as a cast I would say but it definitely gets rigid and it's yeah once you've heated it you can't really go back. Okay um in that case I'll just add this in that case what you might want to do is use a handheld steamer which doesn't put out quite the heat of the heat gun and you can sort of play with that to see how hard or pliable you want it. Okay um there are several people who said that when you attach pins to a garment you should make a a note about where you attach them so that in case you're not the person who takes them the costume off the mannequin things won't be damaged by removing them. That's a very good point that's something that I forgot to bring up and thank you for bringing that up yes that is important because I think you know we we always assume that like oh we'll be the same people. That's right and we usually are and we usually are but you never know what you might not be the person and the person removing the costume might not be aware that there are pins in the garment so yes that's a very good point and thank you for bringing that up. Okay um what type of RH in climate is best to store garments? Um generally the standard is um about you know 65 degrees with 50 to 55 percent humidity that you know give or take you know a couple of percentages or degrees but that that's the general standard and it would be lovely if you had the time and the supplies to be able to house those things well. We've got our gum with the wind dresses and really nice garment boxes that sit on the shelves but then we also have things that hang that we've made padded hangers for and we cover those hanging racks with like a tyvek material to protect them from light and dust and things like that. Okay um there were a couple of questions about what if you're the only one if you're a team of one for dressing a mannequin with no volunteers or help do you have any suggestions? Oh gosh it's uh that that's a tough situation to be in because really for the um for the well-being of the costume it's really good to have at least one more person helping you out. I mean there are some pieces that may be easier to do if it's just sort of like a one-piece you know 1940s dress that you can just you know but even if you're sliding it over the top of a mannequin it's still nice to have another person there who can guide it over the form. In that case I guess I would recommend whatever you can do while the garment is flat because as long as it's flat on a table or flat surface it's being supported in some way so if there's any way that you can sort of safely insert a form into a costume while it is being supported while flat you could try that of course that can be difficult. I would say just try and drum up support for uh for volunteers and maybe go to different places in your community where you think there might be students or interested uh you know individuals who might want to help you out and and volunteer because this is this is very difficult work to do on your own. So I wish you I wish you luck and um I yeah I hope that some some good volunteers come your way because especially dressing it it is difficult to do with one person. Um there's a question here that I don't quite understand it says leaving the material bleeding over a period of time would it damage the material? I'm not sure what material they're talking about. Oh you mean like would would sort of the pleats would the folds of the pleats transfer to the garment? I wonder if that's what they mean and that's what yeah and and that's why you always if you do you say like those net pleats or gathers that we showed um if you either you know sew them directly to the form you want to be sure that that isn't resting directly against your garment you want to have some sort of barrier. Now if you don't want to make like a full blown petticoat or you just want to you could even make a little apron and tie it in the back just just make sure that that isn't resting directly against your costume that there is some some sort of barrier that will because it will also look better too if you um you know have supports uh underneath your costume either sewn to a petticoat or sewn to the form it's going to go look lumpy and you're going to see those um those supports so even just covering it um with some sort of you know simple muslin petticoat or um or apron um will help protect the costume and it will also look more natural too. Okay and and there was a confirmation that was what they were talking about. Okay what if what if you encounter a sticky zipper is there some sort of lubricant that's safe to use sparingly? Gosh you know that's something that we haven't encountered I would um I would be hesitant to recommend anything because I'm I I'm not sure what would be conservation grade or what would be safe to do um I would say yeah if you have a sticky zipper I mean if you're able to consult a conservator or maybe a resource like you know connecting to collections care or you know see see what advice you might be able to find online um that can be uh yeah a difficult decision because once you you put something uh you know an outside material onto your collection costume you're really not quite sure what you might be introducing so unfortunately I'm sorry I don't really have a recommendation for that but you always want to be careful before you um yeah anything yeah. Okay um what standards for dressing knit fabrics for example wool swimsuits is is this too much stress to put on a form or is it a case by case basis I've seen fabulous wool woolen forms for woolen bathing suits yeah um I think it definitely is a case by case basis I would say and yeah I mean that is something to to consider that when you know because that's how knits are worn they're stretched across the body and um if you want to show it the way a human being would wear it then you do need to accept sort of a certain amount of stretch or stress um on the on the knitwear um so I think yeah it's definitely a case by case basis um you you want to you know you know pat out or create a form where it looks natural but you you also want to be sure that you're not creating too much stress um I think you just kind of have to yeah look at the garment look at it on the form say does it look comfortable does it look natural in some cases you might just want to you know display display something flat um of course that's not as compelling as as when it's on a form but um yeah I would say it's definitely a case by case basis I don't know if there's really a sort of a standard procedure for that or not that I'm aware of it's something that we haven't had to to mount here that's true there's two related questions that both have to do with what kind of armature you use to stand up for a to keep a form upright and one says if you use an ethyl foam insert in the base what's the best way to attach it to a pole I had issues with it sliding up and down oh yeah this is something that actually we forgot to mention um you can use one of those um what are they called collars yeah it's like it's it's a little um it's it's basically a round metal thing that attaches to the to the base or the pole yeah it's like a ring it's like a clamp almost that you kind of turn it has like a screw that kind of clamps it down so that it keeps either your form that's on the pole or the ethyl foam from sliding up and down and you can just insert it right there at the the base of the form or the the ethyl foam to kind of help it stay where it's supposed to stay yeah yeah you kind of decide and that's where it's again it's good to have more than one person where you can have one person holding the form one person uh uh underneath yeah underneath and then you decide okay what's the height that we want this at and then you need another person to to screw that collar into place to keep the form from sliding down and that's worked pretty well for us yeah uh in the past okay what material can can you use material other than muslin over a form i'm doing a pillow mount for a 1917 corset and would like to use a different color the corset is very pale rose uh sure you don't have to use muslin um you can use you know we we've shown examples with stockinette which comes in either cotton or polyester um you can use um there's sort of that uh kind of ivory uh colored polyester fabric that we've used i mean you can really use anything just the most important thing is that you want to be sure that if it is a color if it's dyed that um that dye isn't going to migrate from the fabric to um to your corset so you might want to do a test with that fabric before it definitely wash it um before you use it and then after you wash it just wet it a little bit and put it like do a blot test against maybe a piece of muslin or a light colored fabric and just make sure that not no dye is coming out um and someone here says one of my resources recommends using privatized silk which is also what um china silk mm-hmm yeah no that that's that's very nice too and that's that can be good for like covering like net supports for arms or it's very soft um it's also um archival i believe um so yeah that's also something that that's good to use a little bit more expensive i think with the papier-mache bust like stockman if you have a strapless garment to mount what kind of barrier would you suggest to protect the garment from off gassing how would you apply it um well if we here have used um just more you know polyester batting and stockinette and the stockinette is really um it forms really well because it's stretchy yeah to whatever um whatever you're using and so if it's uh i think you said it was a strapless gown and so you would also want to do that on the inside as well if you want to be really sure that absolutely nothing is going to uh uh off gas and come off of the form you can use a marvel seal which is like an archival foil barrier material and um personally i've never worked with that before so i'm not exactly sure how you would affix that i'm not sure if you're able to sew through that um or you know you could probably end up using some sort of archival tape yeah um or adhesive you can get marvel seal with a an adhesive back and then i would think then you'd cover it with the having in the stockinette right right yeah so that yeah so if it comes with an adhesive back then that would probably be if you wanted to cover the whole inside of the form as well as the outside then that sounds like that would be something really great to get that it would um it would just adhere to the curves of your form and then you can go ahead and yeah cover it with whatever sort of batting modifications you're making with with you know with a cover with stockinette or muslin and then you could be sure that yeah absolutely nothing is going to off gas okay um the next question we're getting close to the end here um is do you recommend placing it an additional layer of batting between the added supports and the finished cover to smooth over the out the overall form yeah yeah yeah i mean that that's good just be sure you're not adding too much if you want to do that um just make sure you've still got some room between like the actual measurements of your costume and what your form is so it i mean especially with the epiphone right forms um that does really help to sort of smooth it out so just make sure you account for that when you're making the form um that oh i need to leave you know a quarter inch or so that's right um because a lot of times what ends up happening if you are using epiphone as your form you end up carving away a little too much and so then you end up padding out and it's just becomes this sort of this thing so yeah just make sure that you're not padding it way too much out so that when you go to put your garment on it won't fit and you have to take everything off again and take the padding off just do it a little bit at a time i guess yeah and the batting does have give that's right so you'll probably be okay but yeah i mean the bottom line is that it always takes a lot more time than you think it's going to take to do these things i mean just from looking at this webinar you know we kind of are showing you everything and it we might be making it look a little bit easier than it is but really just make sure that you've carved out a big chunk of time to be able to you know figure out everything that you're going to need to do what's the difference between faux shape and buckram well buckram is um it's like a cloth yeah it's going to be a lot more messy i mean it's good and and we have a resource in um a print resource in our resource list that i think does have an example of making a form from buckram but basically you have to um apply paste with that and put it over in the existing that like a form that you want so you want to make a um a strapless version of this dress form that you have so you can apply you know you put a plastic or something over your dress form first you apply the buckram and strips sort of going around and around building up layers around your dress form and then once it hardens then you can cut it away and and you have your dress form so but it can be really messy if you're you know because it gets really sticky and so faux shape you don't have to deal with any of that that's right faux shape is a magical material i mean it really is just incredible to work with the only issue with it of course is that it's costly so if you've got the budget i would always go for faux shape especially because it's a more archival material okay um what's the best way to transport a dressed mannequin across town wow um that's something we've never personally had to do we usually dress something in place i would suggest that if there's a way for you to be able to put that um garment or costume into some kind of a box to house it and that way you can make sure that you're supporting your material while it's inside there then i would that would be the way that i would choose to do it if it has to be done while it's dressed or on a form or something like that you just want to make sure that that is as stable as possible so that means somebody's holding on to that somebody's making sure that it's not going anywhere i mean unless you've got some kind of um sort of a fitted out van or something in the back where you can secure it in some way then i would definitely recommend putting it in some type of a housing or box and um or just having people securely holding it while it's being transported i mean obviously standing is the best way but that might not be an option that's right where you would have it you know on the form you know secured to some kind of support so that's in a crate or um where it's actually you know like like the neck is tied down that the base is secured uh to the crate um if something is dressed and uh you could um sort of have it on like a covered muslin board and um in places where it seems to be moving a lot um you can sew ties to the board and then maybe tie it down and then if you use a big enough piece of muslin that will cover the board and then also come over that you can cover it with kind of create a little cocoon um you could try that also um in any any case it sounds like you're going to need a pretty large vehicle to be able to transport it uh safely yeah i they said that they wrap it in bubble packing and put it in a large moving box and that they age a few years and they send it in yeah yeah i bet um okay any any recommendations uh on if you have to walk a costume down a runway as if it were on a model or is it simply or do you simply put it on a padded hanger i i guess that's if you have it hanging i i'm not sure i'm thinking of that performance piece that Tilda Swinton did in paris where she actually handled and carried down pieces in the collection with white gloves and i i don't think she was holding them on a hanger um i mean i guess if yeah if you um um walk a costume down the runway as if it were on a model um i mean yeah i guess have it dressed and on wheels yeah we've got we've got a couple of forms that we've got that have wheels as the base and so you know those wheels can lock into place so that they can be you know static but also if we're moving it from place to place it's got wheels on it otherwise um i'm not sure i mean if you if you're talking about doing a floating form in other words using sort of maybe the fa shape or something um that can be hung and suspended but i don't know technically how you would move those yeah i guess you'd have to have a lot i mean especially if you have a a dress that reaches the floor you'd have to have it on some sort of trolley with make sure it's secure like weighted down to the trolley or like the the mannequin base is but gaby the person who asks this says that stairs are involved what a nightmare oh my god oh i see um stairs are oh my gosh um well if yeah that's a that's a tough one it sounds like you would have to have as many people involved as you possibly could if there was any way that you could not transport the costume dress down the stairs i mean that would just be the ideal situation i'm not sure what your situation is but um because that that's a lot of things to be watching out for that's right and holding on to and thinking about your own safety as well as well as the safety of the costume i would say if there's any way that you can advocate for not not having to transport that dressed costume down the stairs would obviously be the ideal situation right and if there's anyone that you could reach out to you that's an exhibition or a preparator someone who's done something you know had an exhibition where anything like this has been done before they might have some good ideas for you at you know your local museum or something um but we're not really an exhibition so we haven't really had to have to encounter that too much yeah okay so we have two more questions and we have just a few more minutes one is um what can be put over a hard mannequin that was donated to make it more archival safe um i i think you're meaning a a fiberglass mannequin um i would again if that if that's what you mean um i would recommend looking at that other connecting to collections care webinar that i mentioned it's from 2013 um some conservators from uh i believe was the india the museum of indianapolis and they go over a lot of different techniques to cover and modify fiberglass mannequins and then i'll go ahead and as a last question what are the best manufacturers for conservation grade mannequins and customized customizable ones like ethyl foam uh dorkman i would say that i think they're they're the one uh supplier that i'm aware of that does make conservation grade mannequins that you can sculpt and modify um made out of ethyl foam okay so um please remember to fill out the ethyl foam i mean the the evaluation yeah right do the ethyl foam while you're lying while you're and um we will see you uh in a couple of weeks uh the beginning of may for the uh webinar on uh hazardous materials and thank you jill and april for a wonderful um webinar thank you


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome to this next episode of The Therapy Show with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones, only it's not Bob this week. We've got Bob's wonderful wife, Steph, who's also a psychotherapist and are you co-founder of the Manchester Institute? No, I'm just a co-director. Co-director. What they say about a great man behind a great man is a great woman. Even better woman, even better, not just great Steph. So we're gonna continue on the theme of working with different clients and this week we're gonna be talking about the anti-social clients. Steph's an expert in this field. So Bob's giving up his chair to Steph so that she can talk about this. So what we normally do with Bob is kind of talk about how the client presents and then maybe the treatment plan and how we work with the anti-social client. Okay fine. So over to you. What do you want to start off doing? First of all, only to say I've had experience in my early social work life working with anti-social. I wouldn't say I'm an expert but I quite like working with them actually because they're a challenge and they're quite good fun or they can be. What age would you say that you can start to see this personality type develop? I would say in their teens usually because you know that's the time of life. We expect kids to start getting it together and being responsible. Although teenagers have got reputation of being a bit riotous and you know getting into trouble but anti-social forever getting into trouble. They have no sense of boundaries so I would say it usually is more apparent in the teenage years. Yeah the reason why I'm asking that I think that was probably the first time that I came across anybody that I thought was possibly this was when I was fostering teenage boys. There was quite a bit that was kind of oh this is this is something different. Yeah well it's interesting that you're saying that you came across it whilst fostering because it's usually kids come into the fostering realm you know my experience anyways as a previously social worker because parents can't manage them and it's usually they've not been managed as they come into care and you end up having to deal with that and the fact that comes from a child who hasn't been consistently parented. Yeah and like you said the boundaries and things like that was an issue. And consequences not realising how their actions had a consequence. They don't really have you know what's it called they don't have a sense of their impact really. Yeah yeah. Have any sense of the other. I think that was the thing that I noticed more than anything yeah. Yeah well the the key issue really is that they come from a background where there is hardly any parenting minimal parenting or no parenting at all. So you know on the spectrum the middle is minimal that is none and that is hardly any. Yeah. And depending on that level depends on what kind of behaviour you end up having to manage. And so you know the clinical picture is actually I actually wrote an article so I've got the clinical picture is that they they tend to be a challenge to work with because they have no sense of the normal normal boundaries. Yeah. The boundaries are just so difficult to keep for than antisocial because once the damage is done you have to work so hard to reset the boundary. Yeah. And it takes an awful lot of energy and you know possibly near near or near enough saint-like patients to keep that continuum going. Yeah. Because you know they they they tend to do the acting out because it's a way of them dealing with feelings. So if you have an inconsistent parent you'll know that parent has not dealt with those feelings. Yeah. So what they do is they initially at a younger age act out to get attention then the acting out becomes really quite serious as they get older. Nice to know how the lesson acting out can can go into the realm of offending. Yeah. Yeah. So you end up with the police knocking on your door. Yeah. And you know they use their behaviour to protect themselves from feelings. Because one of the things that happens when they're very young is they usually come from a background where they have a very laissez-faire if you like laid that mother one-minute who is somebody who anything will go with and then they'll have a mother that's attentive or on the other extreme. So it's a bit like you know the the the three levels I said about slightly involving minimal and not at all. Yeah. That's the reflection of the mother who does the same thing and when she's at her worst she'll hit them or push them away or reject them and say get out you know I don't want anything to do with you and possibly even become violent with them.  So to manage it they act out. Yeah. Which is really really difficult to deal with if you're the one that's having to deal with the fallout. Yeah. So they tend to have a little bit of a tough guy outside sense of being and a real empty inside sense of being and they'll want high high stimulation because they cannot deal with boredom. So they'll always be wanting to do something. So you you know the the younger adolescent will get into mischief break windows you know nick things go stealing nick someone's bike the older adolescent will get into fights and that kind of high level stimulation and break in and do burglary. Yeah. Yeah. So they are very dependent on external stimuli very dependent so slightly narcissistic components if you think about it because it's all about them. Yeah I think that was the thing that I kind of struggled to separate out was is this narcissistic or is this antisocial there was definitely a crossover and that you know inability to take responsibility for things you know they did it because they did this to me or you know it was it they just never took responsibility for their actions. And again that's all about the defence. Yeah. More they build up. Yeah. But they don't want you to get through and they also have slightly sadistic components about them as well because they are really angry ragingly angry about the rejections you know so the antisocial male depending on the level would have had a really not just a really uninvolving mother but a really uninvolving father who's probably never been there to set the boundaries or to show this is what you know a male. Yeah. So they have a tendency to want to take it out on somebody. Yeah. And not really have any thoughts afterwards of the impact that has no conscience. Yeah. So what they do need is a really strong structure to be able to function and they don't have that they don't have that because it's not been more modeled for them. And when that happens is they tend to although you probably don't see it or you might just see a little bit of it go into extreme panic and fear if things don't go the way they thought they were going to go. Yeah. Yeah. The way they defend against that is violence or anger or acting out in some way but internally internally they are fearful and frightful of whatever's going on for them because they don't have that internal parent that says it's going to be all right you've got options you can go and get help from x, y and z. Yeah. Because the other decision they would have made fairly early on in their early life is they're never going to ever going to let anybody get close enough to let them down in the way that their parents have let them down. Yeah. So that's the bottom line. So they don't ask for support. They don't ask for help. So they live in this world where they need this you know real extreme stimulus to defend defend against the extreme fear and panic. Which is a nightmare for them. Yeah. You can understand when you're talking about it like the teenagers that I was working with the real extremes you know and not wanting to stereotype but particularly males will cover up fear and anxiety with aggression and anger anyway you know. So yeah it's a shame being on the receiving end of it is difficult but for them you know on the other side it's a nightmare. When you think about what the experiences must have been like for them as children to be in the role of having to parent themselves all the time. Yeah. So that way of being doesn't change in their adult life they're still parenting themselves from a child perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Something very black and white stuff. You're either nice or you're not nice. You see the good or it's bound. In TA terms if you think about it what how we talk about it is that in the child they've got in the child ego state you've got P1A1 and C1. Yeah. Mostly the decision making comes from P1A1. Yeah. Which is like a very undeveloped parent. Yeah. So I was thinking about a couple I worked with and the guy was typically antisocial and he parented his children from a small almost like a childlike way of parenting them. There was no leeway. There was no okay let's negotiate or you know no talking things through. It was you did this so you're going to have this because that's what I think you should have. Yeah. And that's that's how he thought it should be done and he was really functioning for a very small child place really. When I was doing my training the way that I kind of got my head around that was because I'm a nursery nurse that was one of my first jobs is to remember what it was like in the you know the role play corner when I was working in reception class when you saw you know and playing mums and dads with a baby if the baby didn't stop crying you know picking it up and smacking its head against the wall to shut it up. It's that real basic parenting that little kids do. Yeah exactly right you absolutely spot on Jackie so you know give the baby the mustard medicine. Yeah that's what when you're talking about P1 and A1 it's that kind of basic just stop doing what you're doing. Yeah and so Guy was squirting washing up liquid in their children's mouths for bad mouthing back at him. Yeah some real extreme stuff yeah it was quite shocking. Yeah yeah they told me about this. It can imagine the buttons it's pressed with me. Yes yeah safeguarding etc. But from their point of view it makes perfect sense that to me was one of the difficulties is that I don't see what the problem is that makes sense. Why is that not appropriate? Yeah and so they have an extreme fear if their behavior doesn't work and that's one of the ways they kind of kind of take back control. And you know from a from a parenting message a motherly message I guess or a female antisocial message it will be you need me I don't need you.  So you can see how that would be a huge challenge in the therapy room for you and as you as a foster mother to kids who are antisocial how do you connect with those kids? How do you connect with those people who have that view of relationships? It's exhausting. Yeah because they have a low frustration tolerance they seek excitement and drama they have higher energy they also tend to be quite goal oriented as well because they're quite like the comeback and the strokes from achievement. Yeah yeah and they do think really well on their feet. It's just that they tend to be so they make such irrational decisions their decision making is not thought out decision making. Yeah yeah they tend to get themselves into problems. And there's different types of antisocial presentations so there's the impulsive type the explosive type there's also the perverted antisocial presentation as well where they become eroticized by other people's displeasure with the displeasure of others and being the bad object of another so it will be someone who will talk about things in a very sexual way in company to see people squirm. Yeah. The discomfort in the response to that gamblers that's another presentation because the rules of the game become their external structure so that gives them the boundaries and they tend to think about it in terms of well you can trust the roulette wheel but you can't trust the man. Yeah yeah and also the other presentation is addictions because that's another way of dealing with their feelings. So in the therapy room is that is that kind of where your target is is to you know encourage feelings as opposed to the behaviour? Well I think I think first of all I mean I always think about an antisocial as being like a very naughty child. Yeah. Really um and so what they need to know is how they impact you. If they're committed to change then you make that contract with them I mean I would make a contract in the therapy room and say okay you've come because you've lost your job or your relationship's not working let's have an understanding of what that's about and I'll get a sense of them being antisocial and I'll say well it seems to me like what might be useful is that you get some feedback about how I'm impacted about what you tell me. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember doing some supervision with somebody who had an antisocial client and he would come straight from McDonald's bring his drink, finish it very loudly you know when the straw reaches him. Gurgling. And then he would burp really loudly and she said he would do that every time and have no sense of the impact of the problem. Yeah. It was like for me in the room him coming in you know slurping his drink and then burping and I said well he's an antisocial so unless you say to him hey I just want to feed something back to you I just find that really uncomfortable when you do that I'd rather you didn't. How's he going to know? Yeah. Because very often they don't know. So it's a bit like you know if you're living in a house where nobody sets the boundaries in terms of making sure that you go out the house with a coat on. Yeah. Yeah.  So what the antisocial is the acting out of an antisocial isn't always something that they consciously plan to do it's just the way they think they have to be. Yeah. So the role of a therapist first of all is to bring that into their awareness and stroking them for doing it really and saying great I'm really glad I really appreciate you doing that.  Sometimes paradoxical interventions are really good as well if you know what I mean.  Yeah. So I've got to say a bit more about that. So you know they might when you when they turn up at your therapy room they're there before you and smoking. Yeah. Yeah. And shocking the you know the butt on the floor outside the therapy door. Now if you were to say don't do that please don't do that. That would trigger their antisocial response maybe and be rebellious about it. So you might want to say oh here we go again. Another nail in your coffin. Yeah. Yeah. Another nail in your coffin so that you have an early demise so you can do it in a jokey way. Yeah. So you're not hitting them head on. You're kind of going under the radar so to speak. Yeah. That's the paradoxical intervention. So I once was working with a young girl who was really antisocial and used to find it very difficult to connect with me when she came in the room and you know would mess about the king things and you know you know chuck things in the paper basket. And one day she came in and she put the blanket over her head and was giggling underneath blanket. So I got up off my therapy chair and got underneath the blanket with her. Bless. Therapy under the blanket. Like sit outside the box. It works. Yeah. So it's stuff like that. And it's not what they expect either. You know that can be a big thing. If you're a bit off the wall as well it kind of normalizes some of the behavior too. Yeah. Yeah. So you know high doses of negative stroking is very often quite effective. Yeah. Yeah. So you know when they say something like and you know what happened today. I got sent out the school room four times. Miss sent me out four times. Yeah.  So nothing to do with this behavior but just a joke about his demeanor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So and positive strokes really from the from a child ego state rather from adult. So if you're going to stroke them from child you stroke them for it's less threatening if you do it. If you try to hit the child part of them yeah. You know for example to say oh you know what I really like to do that and I'm sorry you had a hard time or something you know some kind of nurturing response rather than. Yeah. Oh great nice one which is an adult response. Yeah. Yeah. Because I would imagine you know if if you are trying to give them validation and recognition they're not going to trust it for one and they're probably going to throw it right back at you. You know the foster kids that we had it was like yeah well what do you know you know nothing.  A lot of it was humour a lot of it was banter it was that that was how we used to connect to them yeah.  Yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah and even then you know you think yeah I've made a connection but the day after it had begun again you were constantly playing catch up all the time that lack of trust was yeah. So you kind of have to play it the same way as they are really and be unpredictable be zany yeah like getting under the blanket and having a giggle with them. Yeah and you know I would imagine even in the therapy room it's not taking it personally which you know it is easy said and sometimes it's difficult to do that it's not personal it's not yeah. Yeah it isn't personal it and it is it's really important to stay on track yeah and not be hooked on the subject either so you know to find ways of picking it up later on and letting things drop so you can come back to it. Yeah. So you don't hook that rebelliousness or that anti-social response towards you. And does that link in as well to what you were saying about them having you know a low tolerance you know for staying on track and and they need high stimulus to you know to expect to just be working on one topic in a session would be quite difficult for them to do so to be spontaneous and yeah obviously have a treatment plan but it's it's up to negotiation or adapting.  Yeah. Which is true you are. Yeah. I'm not trying to nicey nicey and saying oh well I can understand you shrugging. Yeah. Well about boundaries in the sessions are you would you be quite firming the boundaries is that the one time where you would be quite you know parents here with the times finishing time start times what's acceptable within the sessions. Yeah. Yeah. If they came late I would say oh here we go again you're late aren't you you know and make a point of saying well we're still finishing on time and then the time comes saying bye. Yeah. Maybe 25 minutes but tough luck. Yeah. You're going to come for your full hour on time. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing and be very very strict on boundaries. Yeah. Let them know what what's acceptable and what's unacceptable for you because then they know where they are in the scheme of things because that's the one thing they've never had. No one's ever told them as a child exactly how things are going to be because one minute it's this way. Yeah.  Yeah. So you have to use your positive controlling parents very clearly with them and make it clear that you will pay me when you come the session will last this long if you don't turn up on time um it still ends at the same time. Same time. Yeah. If you don't turn up at all you're gonna have to pay me next time you come. Yeah. Those kinds of things. Yeah. They're really clear. It's I think working with them as well is it's important to point out the inconsistencies between what happened to them in the past you know make it very clear to them how come they do what they do because I think they really need to understand that and again it's helping them become accountable for themselves. Yeah. Yeah. What they do now because of what happened then is not working. No. But they can do something different and they have got choices. Yeah. I mean that that's probably something that will take a bit of time in the therapy because obviously the one thing that they find difficult is staying in a relationship long enough for that to work. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say that because they do have quite a strong pleas others because they do like the attention and getting the recognition and the validation. So up to a point they are quite people pleasing in a manipulative kind of way to a certain extent. Yeah. Which I suppose that links into the narcissistic that we've talked about in the past. Well the manipulation has really worked for them. Yeah. In the past because that's helped them to get what they need. Yeah. So they'll have relationships with people who meet their needs. Yeah. Yeah. Rather than people they can feel connected to. So they won't really have a strong sense of what it's like to be in a healthy attaching relationship. Yeah. Is it would you say that there's quite a bit of self sabotage goes on then in relationships that you know if the other is starting to form an attachment that they will sabotage the relationship and get out of it because they don't know how to be in that relationship. I think what tends to happen is the partner feels frustrated because they don't appear to be as committed as they would like them to be and they put pressure on them and that then causes them to panic. Yeah. That's when they get fearful and panic and so they'll escalate their behaviour in some way to stop that of the person from getting closer and closer to them and you'll see that happening in the therapy room. They'll try and do things to sabotage the therapy. Yeah. What you have to do is bring that into their awareness and say you know what I think you might be doing something you might be doing a number on me unconsciously. So I'm bringing that into your awareness. Yeah. Yeah. And again you've got to be on your toes with them in the therapy room. Yeah. Yeah. Because they can be charming manipulator. They can be so charming and you know the boys that I work with I only work with a couple of girls who are like that but it was mainly young men actually. Yeah. Who are like that. We're very good at getting you on their side. Yeah. Because you know I did a lot of assessments for juvenile court and had to write and write a report. So of course they want the best sentence ever and they don't want to go down and get put away into juvenile halls. Yeah. So you know they would be on their best behaviour. Yeah. I think that was the relationship that I had with you know a lot of the foster children. You know I was attached to them. I did like them. The behaviour was really difficult at times but yeah I liked being around them. Yeah. For me it just felt like if you slept on it you started back from scratch the morning after it wasn't like they could carry on that nice relationship into the next day. It was like every day you were starting from scratch with them. That was what used to exhaust me. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember instances of working with the young boys. You know we used to take them on holidays and stuff like that in the summer. Yeah. Because they often hadn't been on holidays and they would go from being 16 year olds to like you know little boys 10 year olds. Yeah. It's been such fun because they've never never had that opportunity with the parents they were with. They would have fun with you. Yeah. And you would see that vulnerability for the next day it would start again. Yeah. Yeah. Probably do something to sabotage it in the evening by sneaking out and buying loads of alcohol and getting totally blottoed. Sounds familiar. Sounds very familiar. Yeah. I remember sleep taking some kids to a log cabin and quite a few were anti-social have quite high traits of anti-socialness. Yeah. And the you know the support workers were in one side of the cabin in the middle was the living area and the other side was their bedroom and they just kept us away most of the night three o'clock in the morning. I just got out of my bed and I and I yanked one of the kids out of their bed took them into my room chucked him in my bed and I slept in the room with the kids and that was it. They never made another sound all night long. Otherwise happy memories. He's funnier when when you look back on things you know you can see why they did what they did when you're in it I always found it quite difficult. Living with somebody who's displaying anti-social behaviour is is quite intense in a therapy room. I think it's it's different. Yeah. It is different. Because by the time they come to therapy they're realising that they need to do something about what's going on for them. Yeah. Yeah. What you get in I suppose in your in your foster home is kids who are reeling from the damage that they've experienced. Yeah. And you're getting the flak from that. What sort of thing do you think would bring an adult into therapy? What kind of would be the catalyst for them to seek help? Probably to do with relationship problems more than anything. Yeah. Problems at work. So you know stuff like fiddling the books and getting caught. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That and then and then their relationship fell apart because the wife found out they'd lost the job because they were fiddling the books. Those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. So it would be that risk taking that breaking the law that on the verge of illegal activities type things. Yes it would. Yeah. When you think about think about the in terms of the what we call the TA present the TA style presentations. You know the games the games that they play the sort of high level games that they do plays cops and robbers. Yeah. Catch me if you can. Yeah. Yeah. That's the major game that they play. But and they do have very strong don't make it decisions don't don't be close don't feel don't don't think but do you think to our smart people? Yes. Yeah. So they're the kinds of things that you would be dealing with in the therapy room really that they they sell pretty close to the wind. Yeah. Exciting day's work though. Yeah. Oh thank you so much for doing a guest appearance Steph. I really appreciate it. Thank you. You're very welcome. You're very welcome. I'm good to speak to you too. Yes. No don't we'll have you back again. Take care. And you. Bye. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.