Process

Outline your approach to the project? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What did you research and explore? what were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them?

Soft circuits have become more and more prominent in the last few decades with the rise of technology. That technology has allowed fabrics to be woven with conductive material, make conductive threads, and essentially make lighting or something electrical part of clothing. Due to its woven nature, most fabrics end up having a similar feel as taffeta. However, the question of how to wear these fabrics in different weathers is still being worked on, as well as the concern about wearing something conductive. These issues are continuously being addressed by those pushing the industry forward. Common materials used for conductive fabrics are copper, silver, and nickel. Thread can be most commonly found using stainless steel. Some typical switches used in circuits are snaps and pins, and I will be using the former in my dress, considering it already went with the design.

1. For my project, I knew it would be easiest to connect my LEDs using a parallel circuit, as opposed to a series circuit, since the former would be easier to connect and would be less taxing on the battery. However, just due to the sheer amount of LEDs that I want to put in made me decide to use 2 9V batteries, which I believe should be enough for the project. I plan to put them vertically around the dress, with 8 strips in total. After doing the research, I realized that having the one horizontal strip on the bottom as I initially drew could potentially be dangerous, considering that it is right at the end of the dress and would touch the floor. Therefore, I eliminated it from the design. The LEDs I would use would be something like this ( http://bit.ly/1qoKMpu), which require 12V to run. Therefore, I decided that the least bulky way to get the minimum voltage was to stack two 9V on top of each other using connector caps such as these ( http://amzn.to/1S29zdD) to connect them to each other. To go along with the colors of the dress, the circuit would be completed using a silver coloured conductive thread. 

2. For making the gathering and manipulating the form of the dress to have a wider and more ruffled frame, I decided to focus on gathering the dress at the top, where the bottom part of the dress meets the top corset. The gathering also serves a functional purpose where it makes the dress easier to get into. Since I used organza for the first dress I made and it worked well, I want to use organza for this one as well, specifically silk organza. After gathering it in a way I want at the top, I'll put in snaps that correspond with where the dress meets the corset. That way, if the gathering comes apart when I attach the two pieces, it's still possible to fix it (I do not plan on sewing the gathering in place because I want it to be flexible). The snaps can also hold the gathering in place a bit. The snaps I want to use can be found at any arts and crafts store and I want to use a mix of clear snaps and metal ones (metal for completing the circuit, clear for attaching the dress). The clear snaps also ensure that I don't accidentally short the circuit if those snaps come into contact with the lights or the conductive thread. The snaps I am looking at are like http://bit.ly/1U2sWEN and  http://bit.ly/1XEL0E3.