Outcome

Skill Investigation: 99-352 Final Project

Process:

Materials:

-felt

-CR2032 battery

-sewable LEDs

-conductive sewing thread

-regular sewing thread

-sewing needles, scissor

-snap buttons

I came up with this idea during our soft circuits and smart textiles lesson, but it was too complicated for me to finish during class time so I decided to bring it home and work on it as my final project. The felt heart is not part of it. The idea was that the leaf, which had conductive fabric underneath, would connect the circuit when pressed and the rose would light up. The rose was sewn with conductive thread to the big part of the stem, which was to hide the battery.

Initially, I planned on using as many LEDs as possible, starting from within the rose. The LEDs would light up when the rose was unfurled, but would turn off when rolled up. I thought this was due to the conductive thread touching itself when rolled up, so I decided to only use a couple LEDs in the outer petals. I used sewing needles to connect the circuit when I was testing to make sure the circuit worked before I finalized everything.

Finished Product:

The circuit was still very finicky after sewing, and would only work when tilted on the left side so I couldn't sew the right side down if I wanted it to light up. I also changed the LEDs to red ones, which show up better than the white and yellow ones.

Final Thoughts:

This project was a lot more complicated than I thought because I didn't sit down and plan it out before I started. I had planned on only using the leaf to complete the circuit, but because I didn't think about how to connect the rose to the battery, I had to sew the rose to the stem to clasps which then were connected to the battery. This was all done with conductive thread, so I had to be careful that none of the threads crossed as well. If I were to do this again, I would use fewer, larger petals so that I could incorporate more LEDs that would also be visible. I would also remove either the leaf element or the stem to hide the battery because using both components was redundant. 

This project could be used as a wearable, ie sewn to a shirt if it were made smaller and it would be a cool interactive shirt. It could also be taken off the fabric if the battery pack were sewn directly to the bottom of the rose, which could be a nice gift. 

Various samples made in class:

-hand sewing

-machine sewing

-felting

-machine sewing darts

-cutting with a digital cutting plotter