Circuit Stickers shirt

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.  

• Connect LED negative ends to the rest of the stitching.

​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.

• Do your lights flicker?
  • Are your stitches loose?   If so, tighten them.
  • Do threads from positive touch negative?  Can you make sure they don't?
• Can you test one LED at time?
• Are all LEDs connected at positive and negative?

​8. Model your new awesome shirt!