Another Spotting of Library Creativity- Babs

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Another Spotting of Library Creativity

While traveling around the area recently, I dropped in to another local library and found “Babs”. The mannequin seemed out of place, but there it stood in a beam of light, beckoning me to take a look…



Display of creativity at Simi Valley Library

The bottom of this dress is created with the art from comic books and super heroes. Of course, once I got a closer look, I wanted to know more about this project.

One of the fun parts of running across art work in unexpected places is the happy opportunity of getting to chat with the people behind the work, (though it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like). Fortunately, I was directed to library technician Tami Troutt, the creator of “Babs”, and we had a lovely chat about crafting, creativity and activities at the library.


Bodice detail with three dimensional roses

Originally, Babs was created to promote the “Reading by Design” theme for The Simi Valley Library's 2017 Summer @ Your Library. Tami designed a cotton dress with a tulle skirt to serve as her canvas. Then she looked to women’s literature for materials with which to decorate the dress. 166 copies of covers from books written by women and 2 copies of Allegiant by Veronica Roth, donated by The Friends of the Library bookstore, were used to cover the bodice and create texture over the tulle skirt.



Titles used in the original skirt were gathered across a wide range of literature and included book covers from children’s classics, young adult fiction, adult literature, and biographies of women. Visitors had the pleasure of searching for their favorite titles and connecting with new ones, making “Babs” popular enough to bring her back for Version II with it's comic book skirt.

In fact, Tami is now at work on a new mannequin project using plastic library cards which are no longer in use.

She and I smiled over the possibilities of this “unconventional challenge”, in the mode of the Project Runway fashion design television show… now I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with that one!

 Note: For additional information, please contact: Tami Troutt, Library Technician. Tamara.troutt@simivalleylibrary.orgor 805-526-1735 ext. 5018

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