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Sew a circuit you can wear! This shirt is based off of a project in Diana Eng's book Fashion Geek. 1. Materials  tshirt - warning: stretchy shirts can be tricky to sew Circuit Stickers color LED stickers conductive thread CR2032 coin cell battery LilyPad coin cell switched battery holder needle embroidery hoop scrap fabric (not pictured) 2. Draw your design and trace it onto your shirt with pencil. Sketch out the position of your stickers and battery. 3. Use an embroidery hoop to hold your fabric taut as you sew the letters.  4. Sew all the letters. I sewed the "tr" to the positive end of the battery holder and "nics" to the negative end.  5. Place stickers. Note that the tips of the LED stickers are negative.  6. You will need to connect the LED positive ends to the positive end of the battery. Connect the LED negative ends to each other and the negative end of the battery. To do this without crossing stitches or adding stitches to your design, insert a folded scrap piece of fabric.
 6. Insert a folded scrap piece of fabric. One layer will connect positive and the other layer will connect negative. Be careful that the threads from the different layers do not touch! If they do, the circuit may not work.  7. Test your circuit! Here are some troubleshooting questions.
 8. Model your new awesome shirt! 
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 Make a festive decoration that lights up! Materials: LED Circuit Stickers conductive thread 3V coin cell battery sewable battery holder felt non-conductive thread needle  Place circuit stickers on the felt.  With conductive thread, sew the negative points of the circuit together in a circle. Sew the positive ends together in a larger circle.  On the back of, sew the positive end of the battery holder to the outside circle (positive). Sew the negative end of the battery holder to the inside circle (negative).  Test the circuit by inserting the battery. Your ornament should light up! Cover the LEDs with another piece of felt and stitch around the edges with non-conductive thread.   Make a fun wearable! You will need: Circuit Stickers conductive thread 3V coin cell battery sewable battery holder headband black felt black thread  Cut the black felt into flower shapes. The large piece was made by overlapping flowers and leaving room for the battery holder. Place the circuit stickers on the large piece of felt pointing the same direction. With one piece of conductive thread, sew through the negative sides (grey) of the stickers together. Connect this thread to the negative side of the battery holder (-). With a different piece of conductive thread sew the positive sides (red) together. Connect it to the positive side of the battery holder (+).  Test your circuit by inserting the battery.  Cut holes in the flowers for the light to shine through. Gather the flowers by sewing with regular black thread to make them pop.
Sew flowers over the LEDs, add a flower over the battery holder.  Here are the flowers lit up.  Position your flowers on your headband. I like the flowers lined up asymmetrically.  Sew or glue your flowers to the headband.  Wear your creation!   Light up the night with this Halloween trick-or-treat bag!  Materials: Circuit Stickers conductive thread 3V coin cell battery sewable battery holder canvas bag orange felt black thread This project is based off my Instructables for Halloween decorations. Place the circuit stickers on the bag. With conductive thread, sew the negative sides together (top). Sew the positive sides together (bottom).  With conductive thread sew the battery holder to the inside of the bag, connecting the negative side of the battery holder to the negative side of the stickers (top). Connect the positive side of the battery to the positive side of the stickers (bottom)  Insert the battery into the holder to test out your circuit.  Sew the pumpkin to the bag with regular felt. Have a safe Halloween!   World Maker Faire is September 26-27 at the NY Hall of Science in Queens, NY. While I won't be there this year, here are some here are some young makers, e-textiles, and education exhibitors to check out. The young makers are really impressive and it's amazing to see how kids choose projects and how they solve them. Young makers:
4 Paws Wearables: 3D printed light up pet collars Young woodworking sisters Gabriella (age 10) and Talia (age 7) Arovas make their own toys. O Watch: DIY smart watch for kids E-textiles/soft circuits: Teknikio: cool kits for sewing circuits and origami Becky Stern is the Director of Wearable Electronics at Adafruit and she always releasing great how-to tutorials and videos. At Maker Faire she is promoting a new book, Getting Started with Adafruit FLORA [website] [Maker Faire page] Check out Adafruit's #WearableWednesdays on their blog too. Circuit Sentiments has cool pop-up greeting card kits. [website][Maker Faire page] Education: This month, I started as a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts University. My group will be presenting a talk called Makerspaces as Education Research Subjects [website], on Sunday 9/28 3:30-4 PM at the Make: Education stage.  There are a lot of awesome makers this year at Seattle Mini Maker Faire, held at the EMP September 19-20. Here are some of my favorites!
Pop-Up Science: Seattle’s first and only pop-up museum dedicated to science, technology, and creativity. Pop-Up Science partners with bitwise E-textiles by offering sewable circuits workshops. Big Brained Superheroes Club: Bringing STEAM to underserved kids in Seattle with real-life superpowers. ReMake it Station: Led by SecondUse, who have been reclaiming building materials for reuse in the Puget Sound region since 1994. Evergreen School Makerspace: Evergreen is building a makerspace in a school and sharing along the way. Check out this post, The Makings of A Makerspace. Rainworks: Make art with rain! Positive messages appear when it rains. Play Works Studio: STEM games with storytelling for girls and boys.  This project is based off my LED cuff bracelet Instructables, this time using a circuit sticker. Materials: Circuit Sticker conductive thread 3V coin cell battery sewable battery holder felt snaps non-conductive thread or embroidery floss needle  Place the circuit sticker on the felt. Make sure the negative end (-) points to the negative end of the battery holder (slot). Sew down the snap to the positive (+) end of the circuit sticker and break thread. Sew the negative end of the circuit sticker to the negative end of the battery holder and break thread. Sew the positive end of the battery holder to the snap.  Insert battery and connect the ends of the bracelet together. It should light up! Decorate using non-conductive thread.  I backed Circuit Stickers by Chibitronics last year when it was crowd funded, but I haven't had the chance to try them out. I decided to make a birthday card where the candle on a cupcake lights up with an LED.  First I drew a cupcake and punched a hole where I wanted the LED to light up the flame. I cut out construction paper pieces for the cupcake. Drawing an image works well too.  I drew the battery positions and placed the copper tape so that it lights up the LED circuit sticker (the positive side of the battery touches positive side of the LED). The Circuit Stickers instruction booklet use this clever corner fold for the battery to turn on the circuit, so I used it for my card.  Tada! The candle lights up when you fold the battery into the corner! Doing your own Circuit Stickers project? I'm sure they would love to hear from you!
@chibitronics on Twitter chibitronics on Facebook Read an interview with Jie Qi, the founder of Chibitronics. #summerofawesome #circuitstickers  Back to my basics: knitting and spinning I hope all of you in North America enjoyed the longest day of the year. During my year of bitwise hiatus, I worked in tech in the Bay Area, and I've made a lot of changes! I've moved to Boston and I'm starting a postdoc in the fall at the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts University. My work will involve engineering education in makerspaces. In the meantime, I'm taking the summer off to craft/make/hack, cook, and play frisbee and I'll be sharing some of my adventures here.
I will continue to use bitwise E-textiles as a forum to share cool projects and tech in e-textiles and soft circuits along with connecting maker communities in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and my new home Boston. Follow me on Facebook or twitter for weekly posts. I would love to see what you are up to this summer. Tag bitwise on Facebook and use #summerofawesome on social media. I'll be watching! Full newsletter here.  I’ve seen some cool best of Bay Area Maker Faire posts (list, slideshow). Here is a recap of my favorites:
Jie Qi gave a fabulous talk on paper circuits and all of her work is beautiful. Her talk was so good that the sound guy said it was the best talk of the two days he was working. Check out her pop-up book and and interactive LED painting. Shaper is a self-aligning, hand-held CNC router. It uses tape printed with dominos laid on the work pieces to locate itself. It can do fine alignment when you are close to the shape you want. Awesome if you want to do some cutting but don’t have any room for a large router. They said it would retail around $1-2k. Remember Bop It? (Bop it! Pull it! Twist it!) There was a large person-size one that shot fire for the different motions. Bop it was a pedal, pull it was a rope, twist it was a bike wheel. It was super cool. My high score was 6. :) I enjoyed all things Maker Ed. Went to a talk by teachers of High Tech Middle, who talked about inquiry-based learning in the classroom. Also attended a talk by Samantha Cook of Curiosity Hacked, who talked about learner-centered education (check out this article about how she is hacking education). Missed AnnMarie Thomas’s talk on making makers, but ran into her later (check out her Squishy Circuits). See you at NY Maker Faire in the fall! #makerfaire2015 #makerfaire #bayareamakerfaire #makered |
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January 2016
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