Computational Textiles as Materials for Creativity

FiberPhiladelphia

2012-01-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

FiberPhiladelphia
March - April 2012

FiberPhiladelphia is an international biennial and regional festival for innovative fiber/textile art. Exhibitions are planned for 40 locations including major institutions and independent venues. They will include work by renowned international artists and a new generation of artists breaking into the field.

In the past 20 years, the boundaries between High/Low art and medium specific recognition have been blurred. Unlike the other major craft media, textile artists have the freedom of transcending materials, unbound from tradition. Although many choose to continue to work with historic materials and methods, many have branched out to explore the infinite possibilities of materials and techniques. One can weave metal, clay, even light. Quilts are not necessarily bound by thread or cloth and vessels can be more than objects to contain physical matter; they can reject functionality and explore conceptual notions of spiritual and metaphysical containment.

More at:

http://www.fiberphiladelphia.org/

Outstanding needlework by girls of Chester County

2012-01-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

By Karla Klein Albertson

Fri, Jan. 20, 2012, 10:26 AM For The Inquirer

'In Stitches: Unraveling Their Stories," on view at the Chester County Historical Society through Sept. 7, brings together top-echelon needlework from the society's collection and the formidable textile archives of the Westtown SchoolThe examples chosen for the exhibition not only display clever composition and technical excellence, they also offer insight into the lives of the young women who made them.

This highly collectible needlework was made not by adult seamstresses, but by teen or even preteen girls, who executed samplers as part of their education. The youth of the stitchers is astonishing, especially when viewed in the light of modern values. These can soar into the five- or six-figure range at auction.

Well-known needlework specialist Amy Finkel, of the website samplings.com and the antiques shop M. Finkel & Daughter, emphasizes the importance of Chester County's contribution to the world of antique samplers. "The samplers made in Chester County in the late 18th and early 19th centuries are highly regarded because the teachers there took the art of sampler-making to new levels," she says. "Large, bold pictorial samplers with outstanding house and garden scenes animated with people and animals routinely appear on these samplers.

"It may be that competition for students led instructresses to develop more and more interesting compositions that would be taught to their students. And the vocabulary of stitches and techniques that they taught are of equally high quality."

Curator Ellen Endslow of the Chester County Historical Society worked in concert with Mary Brooks of the Westtown School to assemble the exhibition of 150 outstanding examples made between 1760 and 1840.

Endslow says, "Putting examples from the two collections together really adds something, because you do get to see how the Westtown samplers influenced sampler making elsewhere in the county."

Endslow is particularly fond of the highly decorative, pictorial needlework on display. One of the most colorful is a composition of two birds in a tree, stitched and hand-painted by Martha Vastine of Coatesville when she was about 11 years old.

As part of the goal of the exhibition, the maker's family history is well-documented. She was the daughter of Benjamin Vastine, who operated a store and tavern at "the Sign of the Golden Eagle" on Lancaster Pike.

Works stitched by students at the Westtown School, an important part of the exhibition, are prized by collectors. Still educating young people today, the Quaker school was established in Chester County in 1799. Girls coming to the school at that time were instructed to bring needle, thread, and scissors to begin their education.

Brooks, archivist of the school's collection, notes, "Westtown is one location where needlework was part of a girl's education, and a particular style developed here based on what was being done at Ackworth, a Quaker boarding school in England."

"Some very distinct designs and types of samplers developed," she says. "For instance, the darning sampler was worked with seven or so stitches used for mending different fabrics. Quaker samplers did tend to be more plain and more simple."

Westtown is only one part of the needlework world of Chester County. According to Brooks, the school's style became fairly well-known in Quaker circles because so many girls and teachers went on from Westtown to teach at other schools.

Several of the exhibits in the current show boldly state their Westtown affiliation. One, crafted by an anonymous needleworker, depicts the original four-story brick school building. Another, made by a student in the school's first class, has a central medallion embroidered with the name of the then-new institution.

The education of girls at Westtown, however, went far beyond what was then called women's work. Samplers also incorporated philosophical and religious quotations that students were expected to memorize.

Even more remarkable were the unique embroidered fabric globes produced at Westtown. Stitching details of continents and oceans on the three-dimensional creations helped reinforce the student's

What: "In Stitches: Unraveling Their Stories"

When: Through Sept. 7

Where: Chester County Historical Society, 225 N. High St., West Chester.

Information: chestercohistorical.org or 610-692-4800.

Texting Glove for the hearing impaired

2011-12-18T20:31:00.000-08:00

What you see here in the picture is exactly what you think it is. The Texting Glove is essentially a device where you can use sign language to create a text message.

This device was introduced at Google’s Developers Day in Tel Aviv, by designers Oleg Imanilov, Zvika Markfield, and Tomer Daniel. It uses a gyroscope, an ADK Board, Lilypad Arduino, finger sensors, and an accelerometer.

There is a a video after the jump so you can see how it works. It looks like it has to be calibrated to work with individual hands.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a good idea, but then I thought: can’t the hearing impaired just send a text message with their hands? Then I had to think: I would love to use speech-to-text software.
As it is, speech to text isn’t quite as good as I want it to be. I would imagine that one day, speech to text will be just as good as real speech. Shouldn’t the hearing impaired have this same right? With the Texting Glove, that can happen.

Besides, the texting glove is good for texting and signing words, not just the tapping of letters. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hearing impaired could sign a text message faster than typing it. If so, then I see a good future for the Texting Glove.

show&Tell glove - introduction from sarohm on Vimeo.

Read more at: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20111216/texting-glove-hearing-impaired/

A Master of Embroidery Remembered

2011-12-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

By SUZY MENKES

Published: December 12, 2011

PARIS — The wreaths, the sprays and the clusters of creamy white flowers — even an elegant boot fashioned out of rose petals — made a fitting backdrop at l’Église Saint-Roch for the departure of François Lesage, the artist of embroidery, mourned last week in the world of Paris couture.

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The names on the floral tributes from Dior’s roses to Valentino’s lilies said it all. They included flowers from the house of Yves Saint Laurent, where embroidered

jackets re-creating the sunflowers and irises of Van Gogh were an artistic expression of opulence back in 1988.

Karl Lagerfeld, whose collaborations with Mr. Lesage over nearly 30 years helped produce the fabled 1996 re-creations of the Coromandel screens in Coco Chanel’s apartment, offered a wreath of roses, in tones from chalky white to clotted cream.

“He was fun, quite a number, always joking, with a drink and a cigarette, what the French call a ‘bon vivant’ and a very gifted person,” said Mr. Lagerfeld, who displayed the skills of the house of Lesage at his Indian-themed collection in Paris last week.

At the funeral, Christian Lacroix, who was taken under the wing of Mr. Lesage at the start of his career, recalled their first tense encounter when Mr. Lacroix, who was working at the fashion house of Jean Patou, had kept the famous embroiderer waiting. But from an initial frosty encounter came a warm friendship and close collaboration.

The church in Paris overflowed with the family of fashion, from designers including Azzedine Alaïa and Christian Loubutin to the “petites mains,” the artisan handworkers. Mr. Lesage’s own family spilled over the front rows: his son Jean-François, who established an embroidery studio in India; his daughter Marion, an artist, wearing a jacket with an embroidered heart from an early Lacroix collection and his son Jean-Louis, who read the speech prepared by his father last month when he was awarded France’s highest cultural honor: Maître d’Art.

In those words, Mr. Lesage, 82, talked about his “humble” métier and thanked the house of Chanel, which bought his business in 2002, securing its future. Chanel has done the same for other crafts, like the feather maker André Lemarié.

Mr. Lesage’s grandchildren also spoke, describing vacations in Corsica, where their nocturnal grandfather would play with their computer games half the night and then sweep them off on a boat in the morning.

Why was the death of this fashion figure, at a ripe old age, considered such a landmark moment in the couture world? Mr. Lesage, who took over the business from his father Albert in 1949, was one of the last links in a chain that stretches back to the golden era of haute couture. As a young man he was entranced by the silver screen and set up a business in America to support Hollywood costumers.

But he had known the playful designer Elsa Schiaparelli and had worked with Cristobal Balenciaga, whose studio was always a tomb of silence. His fruitful collaboration with Saint Laurent yielded dresses incorporating the birds of the artist Georges Braque and other art embroideries.

Mr. Lesage had moist eyes when he saw them paraded in what was one of the biggest fashion retrospectives ever presented — on a football pitch during the World Cup in France in 1998.

Mr. Lesage deeply appreciated the poetic essence of his work, saying “embroidery was the love of writing your dreams with a needle, with a pearl with anything that could enchant and bring tenderly to life a décor, an ambiance, a souvenir.”

Those words were at the heart of Mr. Lesage’s work. But the secret of his creative longevity was to embrace the new, as well as establishing profound relationships with designers, working in their individual cultures.

He had memories of watching Yves Saint Laurent going through Schiaparelli 1930s surrealist embroideries in the studio stock of 65,000 samples. And of remaking the original YSL Van Gogh jacket for a client to wear at a celebration of Mr. Lesage’s 50 years in fashion, which was filled with leggy Bluebell dancers, acrobats and jugglers.

Mr. Lesage found another soul mate in Jean Paul Gaultier, who pushed the boundaries of skill and taste to make a tribal reincarnation of a leopard skin couture outfit requiring 700 hours of work.

With haute couture a shrinking industry, is there still a demand for the extraordinary and the exceptional?

Mr. Lesage seemed to think so when in 1992 he set up his embroidery school on his premises in the Parisian district of Montmartre.

At the workshops of Ecole Lesage, the tulle is still stretched over wooden frames and jars are filled with glass beads, sequins, paillettes and pearls.

By serendipity, this technological age is learning to cherish once again handwork and artisanal skills that the haute embroiderer represented.

Mr. Lesage’s ebullient enthusiasm and prolific energy stayed with him to the end.

Or maybe a little longer. In the words of the priest, Father Christian Lancray-Javal, who helped to lay on the coffin a black lace shroud, hand-embroidered with moonlight dapples of silver, the indefatigable François Lesage might be up there now “embroidering the wings of angels.”

from NYT

More than just digital quilting

2011-12-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution.

Chinese hackerspaces, or, what happens when a government is run by engineers

2011-12-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

Nov. 24, 2011

Shanghai Government Technology committee has issued a call for a proposal to build 100 community hackerspaces with government funding for equipment. The communities in resident area are going to manage the spaces and pay for the materials. Each space is required to be at least 100 square meters, more than 200 days/year open, equipped with wood lathes, metal lathes, saws and drill grinding combined machine, milling machine and other tools.

Hackerspaces or creative spaces have been growing rapidly in China. The first one, XinCheJian, was started in Shanghai last November, by David Li and partner/project generator Ricky Ng-Adam.

Xinchejian is a non-profit hackerspace who aims to support, create and promote physical computing and open source hardware. People can exchange their ideas and expertise, get support from work on group and individual projects, and basically, as Ng-adam says, “having fun with technology.”

In 2010 Li formalized Shanghai Hackerspace's connection to the global network of hackerspace. Together with Ng-Adam they draw together hobbyists, electronic freaks, DIY lovers and makers in one place and share fascination for technology. One key player in Xinchejian is Min Lin Hsieh. She is Community organizer, taking care of finance, communication and marketing, as well as helping engineering projects and clubs. The three form a strong team by working together. Today Xinchejian has 100m2 studio full with computer spare parts, micro chips and DIY tools.

Visit to the Textile Museum at the Bank of Thailand

2011-11-28T04:37:00.000-08:00

Textiles and the National Economy

Historically, textiles have been part of the revenue collected by the Thai monarchs from neighboring countries when they were under Thai rule such as Cambodia and Laos in the 15th and 19th centuries respectively. Tributes were also made to the monarchy in the form of textiles from provincial districts in Thailand which were called Muang. In turn, the Thai monarchs would reward their officers and noblemen with gifts of textiles, or even in lieu of their salaries. Particular textiles were designated to court use only, civil servants would be required to wear certain types of cloth to attend functions in the royal court, most of which they received from the monarch. Meanwhile, ordinary people wove their own fabric or exchanged textiles from neighbouring provinces. In the case of imported textiles, until the beginning of this century, the royal court controlled all imported textiles and arranged for certain qualities to be made available to the general public.

For more info go here

Faraday Curtain by Loop.pH

2011-11-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, "Waste Not, Want It" is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg's waste.

Design studio Loop.pH's "Faraday Curtain" is made from hundreds of metres of discarded electrical cable, stripped of its inner core and conductive shielding and rethreaded into an intricately laced textile mesh. The resultant ephemeral textile enclosure provides a soft and sheer shielding from electro magnetic fields.

Loop.pH worked with a team of lace-makers to develop a methodology to work with this non-standard material. Lacemaking is a highly complex and computational method of manipulating many fibres into a cloth and is a dying textile tradition in the UK.

Read more: http://www.dexigner.com/news/24236#ixzz1exnSC5pZ

Upcoming Voodoo Doll Workshop with Catarina Mota on December 1st at Indiana University!

2011-11-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

Soft Circuit Voodoo Doll Workshop

In this free workshop we'll cover the basics of soft circuits (materials and techniques) and then make folk art textile voodoo dolls whose eyes light up when punctured with a needle. All tools and materials (dolls, conductive spandex, conductive thread, etc.) will be provided. You may bring your own doll to modify, if you prefer!

Example dolls can be found at:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/01/soft-circuit-voodoo-doll.html
http://blog.theleadingzero.com/?p=262

Catarina Mota | openMaterials.org
Catarina is co-founder of openMaterials (a research group dedicated to collecting and sharing data on uses and production methods of materials), of altLab (Lisbon's hackerspace), of fabriCulture (a project dedicated to promoting open source digital fabrication and maker culture in general), and a member of NYCResistor. She's also a PhD student researching social, cultural and political aspects of open source hardware and digital fabrication, a visiting scholar at ITP-NYU, and a fellow of the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal. Her maker activities center mostly around smart materials and digital fabrication. More info at www.openmaterials.org/catarina

Costura

2011-11-09T18:02:00.000-08:00

On one of Barcelona’s cutest streets, (Doctor Dou), near one of the most perfect bakeries, (Reykavik), is a little store called Costura. Two friends decided that the city was in dire need of some serious sewing commodities and after much thought and care, their small dream was born. Asami and Sonia have created the perfect blend of quirky clothing, Japanese fabrics, sewing items, customizing kits and best of all, sewing machines that can be rented by the hour. As flats become smaller and smaller, there just isn’t any room (or money for that matter) to actually own a machine. Costura offers the perfect solution, just pop round and use one of their machines for a few hours.

Not All Arduino Uses are Created Equal: Context & Gender

2011-11-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

The below article ran in the IEEE Spectrum Tech-Alert under the awful title, “With the Arduino, Now Even Your Mom Can Program.” The IEEE Spectrum editor immediately sent out an email retraction of the title as being offensive.
But even with the retraction, I don’t think that the piece adequately explores how different the populations are of Arduino users. The below picture is from Leah Buchele at this last May’s NCWIT Summit in NYC.

The graph on the left describes the gender makeup of the Arduino-using community. The graph on the right describes the gender makeup of the LilyPad-using community. The IEEE article simply describes the LilyPad as “waterproof.” Huh? Don’t they know about e-textiles? The red in the graphs are male, and the aqua are female. In statistics, this is called “inter-occular occlusion” — you don’t need a t-test, this just hits you between the eyes. Women like the LilyPad. The Arduino community has almost no women in it. The context matters.

If you’re going to make some crack about mothers programming, then you’d better speak to the significant gender issues. And if you’re going to write about Arduino, you should really know about the different communities. Arduino matters for women, because it led to LilyPad. Arduino itself plays no role in being a technology environment for mothers or just about any women at all. They’d better figure that out before they further explore “integrating it more deeply into the education system.”
To fuel greater adoption of Arduino, the team is exploring how to integrate it more deeply into the education system, from grade schools to colleges. Several universities, including Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, already use Arduino. Mellis has been studying how students and laypeople take to electronics in a series of workshops at the MIT Media Lab. Mellis invites 8 to 10 people to the lab, where they’re given a task to complete over the course of a day. The projects have included building iPod speakers, FM radios, and a computer mouse using some of the same components that Arduino uses.

But spreading the Arduino gospel is only part of the challenge. The team must also keep up with demand for the boards. In fact, the Arduino platform doesn’t consist of one type of board anymore—there’s now an entire family of boards. In addition to the original design, called the Arduino Uno, the new models include a more powerful board called the Arduino Mega, a compact board called the Arduino Nano, a waterproof board called the LilyPad Arduino, and a recently released, Net-enabled board called the Arduino Ethernet.

http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/not-all-arduino-uses-are-created-equal-context-and-gender/

The Making of Arduino: How five friends engineered a small circuit board that’s taking the DIY world by storm

2011-10-31T05:53:00.000-07:00

By David Kushner / October 2011

The Arduino core team [from left]—David Cuartielles, Gianluca Martino, Tom Igoe, David Mellis, and Massimo Banzi—get together at Maker Faire in New York City.

Photo: Randi Silberman Klett

The team recently unveiled the Arduino Due, a board with a 32-bit Cortex-M3 ARM processor that offers more computing power for makers with complex projects. Click to enlarge.

The picturesque town of Ivrea, which straddles the blue-green Dora Baltea River in northern Italy, is famous for its underdog kings. In 1002, King Arduin became the ruler of the country, only to be dethroned by King Henry II, of Germany, two years later. Today, the Bar di Re Arduino, a pub on a cobblestoned street in town, honors his memory, and that’s where an unlikely new king was born.

The bar is the watering hole of Massimo Banzi, the Italian cofounder of the electronics project that he named Arduino in honor of the place. Arduino is a low-cost microcontroller board that lets even a novice do really amazing things. You can connect an Arduino to all kinds of sensors, lights, motors, and other devices and use easy-to-learn software to program how your creation will behave. You can build an interactive display or a mobile robot and then share your design with the world by posting it on the Net.

Released in 2005 as a modest tool for Banzi’s students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII), Arduino has spawned an international do-it-yourself revolution in electronics. You can buy an Arduino board for just about US $30 or build your own from scratch: All hardware schematics and source code are available for free under public licenses. As a result, Arduino has become the most influential open-source hardware movement of its time.

The little board is now the go-to gear for artists, hobbyists, students, and anyone with a gadgetry dream. More than 250 000 Arduino boards have been sold around the world—and that doesn’t include the reams of clones. "It made it possible for people do things they wouldn’t have done otherwise," says David A. Mellis, who was a student at IDII before pursuing graduate work at the MIT Media Lab and is the lead software developer of Arduino.

There are Arduino-based breathalyzers, LED cubes, home-automation systems, Twitter displays, and even DNA analysis kits. There are Arduino parties and Arduino clubs. Google has recently released an Arduino-based development kit for its Android smartphone. As Dale Dougherty, the editor and publisher of Make magazine, the bible of DIY builders, puts it, Arduino has become "the brains of maker projects."

But Arduino isn’t just an open-source project that aims to make technology more accessible. It’s also a start-up company run by Banzi and a group of friends, and it’s facing a challenge that even their magic board can’t solve: how to survive success and grow. "We need to make the next jump," Banzi tells me, "and become an established company."

Arduino rose out of another formidable challenge: how to teach students to create electronics, fast. It was 2002, and Banzi, a bearded and avuncular software architect, had been brought on by IDII as an associate professor to promote new ways of doing interactive design—a nascent field sometimes known as physical computing. But with a shrinking budget and limited class time, his options for tools were few.

Like many of his colleagues, Banzi relied on the BASIC Stamp, a microcontroller created by California company Parallax that engineers had been using for about a decade. Coded with the BASIC programming language, the Stamp was like a tidy little circuit board, packing the essentials of a power supply, a microcontroller, memory, and input/output ports for attaching hardware. But the BASIC Stamp had two problems, Banzi discovered: It didn’t have enough computing power for some of the projects his students had in mind, and it was also a bit too expensive—a board plus basic parts could cost about US $100. He also needed something that could run on Macintosh computers, which were ubiquitous among the IDII designers. What if they could make a board that suited their needs themselves?

Banzi had a colleague from MIT who had developed a designer-friendly programming language called Processing. Processing was rapidly gaining popularity because it allowed even inexperienced programmers to create complex—and beautiful—data visualizations. One of the reasons for its success was an extremely easy-to-use integrated development environment, or IDE. Banzi wondered if they could create similar software tools to code a microcontroller instead of graphics on a screen.

A student in the program, Hernando Barragán, took the first steps in that direction. He developed a prototyping platform called Wiring, which included both a user-friendly IDE and a ready-to-use circuit board. It was a promising project that continues to this day, but Banzi was already thinking bigger: He wanted to make a platform that was even simpler, cheaper, and easier to use.

Read more at http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/the-making-of-arduino

Techy way to spice up that costume for Halloween!

2011-10-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

By Tim Teatro

Ever wanted to make your own Halloween costume, or personalize one you bought from the store? There can only be so many devils and naughty kitties at one party!

If you’ve got the artistic spark, then the Arduino LilyPad can help you put a little techy spice into your clothing.

The LilyPad Arduino is a small circuit board containing a really small micro-controller designed to be stitched into clothing. It can be programmed to blink lights, read data from sensors, make sounds, move servos or motors or any number of things your creative mind can conjure. With very little electronics knowledge and some patience, you can come up with some amazing things! A hat that blinks when you jump, a shirt that displays the strength of wireless signals around you? Sew some tactile pads onto the thighs of your jeans so that when you slap your needs you get a drum beat or a light show. How about a colour organ style light show on your shit that pulsates based on the music around you. Possibilities are endless.

Halloween is the perfect time to show off your creative projects. Feel free to post pictures here in the comments section of this page!

on’t forget to check out YouTube to get some inspiration from others!

You can Google around for a local retailer, or order on-line. In the GTA, you can buy Arduino products and accessories at Creatron. Creatron also does on-line orders. A LilyPad costs about twenty bucks, and then you need some conductive thread and some components!

For ordering LED lights, sensors, and various components, DigiKey.ca is a great source with a flat rate shipping and free shipping on orders over $200.00. For projects where you need perhaps bulk quantities of LED lights, DigiKey price adjusts for volume. That is, you pay less per piece if you buy 10 instead of 5, and even less if you buy 50. If anyone is interested, I have a parts list for some good quality but inexpensive LEDs available from DigiKey.
Also from WhatsYourTech.ca:

More about Tim Teatro
More on digital creativity

Wi-Fi haptic ‘Le-Chal’ shoes to guide the blind navigate city streets now

2011-10-31T05:36:00.000-07:00

A new device for the blind not to hold in hand but inserted into their shoe was made by an Indian engineer from Hewlett-Packard Lab in Bangalore aptly named “Le Chal“, which means “Take me there” in Hindi.

Anirudh Sharma’s Le Chal shoes help the blind to navigate city streets, especially those beset with potholes at every corner or even in the middle of a footpath. These haptic (touch) shoes send vibrations inside the shoe to the holder about the impending obstacle on the road.

The shoe was featured in MIT Review in August 2011. It has four mini-motors which vibrates when ditches or potholes are on the way and it is GPS-synchornized with Google Maps so that the person can follow the route easily. When it vibrates on the left side of the palm, he takes the turn accordingly and the intensity of vibration shows the distance where he or she has to take a turn.

Aided with a Le Chal Android app on a smartphone, the blind gives commands orally on the destination, which is relayed by a bluetooth with Lilypad Arduino circuit board, which takes care of the navigation.

The prototype, priced $20, will be given to 20 persons from a Bangalore blind school on a pilot basis before launching it commercially. “We intend doing about 20 shoes (priced at Rs 1,000 or $20 USD a piece) and distribute them to the visually challenged. After the feedback, we will make all the improvements suggested by the user group before going for future plans,” Anirudh Sharma told the local media.

Wired Textiles for a Phone as Useful as the Shirt on Your Back

2011-10-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

John Volakis wants to make the world hands-free.

The director of the ElectroScience Laboratory at Ohio State University, he is trying to end the need for cellphone hardware like the Bluetooth earpiece by fabricating communication devices out of something that most states require we carry with us all the time anyway: clothing.

“You won’t have to hold your cellphone to your ear,” said Dr. Volakis, an electrical engineer. “We’ll eliminate all that. It will be part of your attire.”

His effort is part of a broad technological effort to make “smart textiles”: wearable fabrics with embedded electronics that can collect, store, send and receive information. His lab is focusing on the sending-and-receiving part, trying to transform military apparel, hospital gowns, even everyday T-shirts into antennas.

Aside from enabling a science fiction luxury — simply speaking into your collar when you want to talk to somebody — antenna clothing could offer covert communication for soldiers, wireless monitoring for the sick and much better reception in general.

Though it will take at least a year for Dr. Volakis and his team to develop antenna clothing for civilians, his lab built antennas into a United States Army bulletproof vest last summer.

The vest, with a square antenna panel embedded in the front and three in the back, is like “having more sets of eyes or ears,” said Chi-Chih Chen, the electrical engineer who led the team that developed it.

Antennas lose reception when blocked by a human body — as evidenced by the static an FM radio spurts out when you walk in front of it — and the cumbersome rod-shaped antennas used by soldiers cannot capture signals from directly above. Communication is severely limited when an antenna goes horizontal, as it does when soldiers duck, crouch or crawl.

“This is where a body-wearable antenna will shine,” said Steve Goodall, chief of antenna technology and analysis for the Army’s office of communications and electronics research, development and engineering. “You can flare the antennas out to cover a larger area,” turning a single one-dimensional rod into multiple two-dimensional panels.

Dr. Chen is working with Applied EM, an antenna research and development company in Hampton, Va., to commercialize the technology, with the help of a grant from the Army Small Business Research Innovation Program. According to the company’s president, C. J. Reddy, each unit will start around $1,000, but the price should come down as production volume rises.

Wearable communications equipment dates back at least to the late 1990s, when a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed the Wearable Motherboard, an electronic T-shirt with no antennas but with ports for multiple inputs and outputs — including a thermometer, a microphone, a blood oxygen monitor and headphones — to help monitor soldiers’ health.

“If you want information about me, that information has to come from my clothing,” said Sundaresam Jayaraman, the textile engineer who led the team. The patents were sold to a private company in 2000, Dr. Jayaraman said, but the technology was never commercialized.

Dr. Volakis shares Dr. Jayaraman’s interest in using clothing to monitor vital signs. He is working to develop an antenna hospital gown that can transmit data like heart rates to a health professional’s computer. Such wireless monitoring could be used not only in hospitals, but also in people’s houses, to remotely keep tabs on the sick and elderly while they move about unencumbered.

“When elderly people stay home, we want to give them independence,” Dr. Volakis said. “People are not going to be tied to a wire.”

The challenges are different from those of a bulletproof vest, which does not need laundering and whose natural bulk can accommodate antenna panels.

By contrast, an antenna gown needs to flow, so it must be made of threads that not only conduct electricity, but are soft and washable. Dr. Volakis’s team is experimenting with high-tech materials like carbon nanotubes and graphene to try to satisfy these requirements.

Beyond that, he says smart textiles could improve the life of anybody who yearns for a stronger cellphone signal.

“We have a huge amount of room on ourselves,” Dr. Volakis said; why not cover it with antennas?

“I’ll make sure you have five bars all the time,” he said. ”Not even five bars; let’s make it 10.”
A version of this article appeared in print on October 25, 2011, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Wired Textiles for a Phone as Useful as the Shirt on Your Back.

Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25shirt.html?_r=1

LilyPad Arduino Brooch!

2011-10-03T00:12:00.001-07:00

Makeshift Magazine

2011-09-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Makers of the world

From the favelas of Rio to the alleys of Delhi, Makeshift Magazine is combing the world and documenting the cultural contexts of the emerging global maker movement. Through stunning photography, video, and writing, Makeshift shares the stories and street-level ingenuity of people whose creativity is as much a mode of self-expression as it is one of survival.

For more

Electronics for everyone

2011-09-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

Curious if you've got what it takes to program robots, make art with lights, or build speakers? Teagueduino makes it easier than ever to get started with programming electronics. Just grab a board, plug in a sensor, and start developing — no soldering required! Whether you're 8 years old or 80 years old, there's never been a better time to tap into your inner geek.

What is Teagueduino?

Teagueduino is an open source electronic board and interface that allows you to realize creative ideas without soldering or knowing how to code, while teaching you the ropes of programming and embedded development (like arduino). Teagueduino is designed to help you discover your inner techno-geek and embrace the awesomeness of making things in realtime — even if you’ve only ever programmed your VCR.

Make

Teagueduino makes making things really simple.

Want to build a light-controlled alarm clock? A harmonic music generator or a light that changes color based on temperature? How about a magnetic field meter or a robotic frog? These are just a few of the things that have been created so far, and with integrated project sharing you can always share your work or see the latest things being built as you go!

Just plug in a sensor to one of the input ports (for example, a knob), hook up an output device (a speaker, perhaps?), and use the awesomely simple Teagueduino user interface to make it work (a single line of code can map the knob's rotation to a musical tone on the speaker)! And since everything changes in realtime, there's no waiting for things to compile or the device to reset.

Learn

Teagueduino makes learning about electronics and programming intuitive.

Beginners can jump in without needing to know how to solder or write code. Of course, there's still lots of room to grow and we're working hard to make the transition to more advanced topics as easy as possible.

For those interested in learning how to work with electronics, there will be step-by-step tutorials for wiring up custom sensors and outputs. If writing software is more your thing, there will be arduino project templates to help you migrate to working directly in C. And for the truly advanced, the main control board (Teensy++) can be popped off the the Teagueduino board for full-out embedded development.

Teach

Teagueduino makes teaching engaging and exploratory.

Conceptually, we've built everything from the ground up to support a low floor (very easy to get started), wide walls (lots of things you can do), and a high ceiling (capable of very advanced projects as needs grow).

Teachers can browse projects in related fields to get ideas about where to start and build interactive models and experiments in realtime with students to increase understanding. Teach the basics of programming and hardware development, or use Teagueduino as a tool to teach others topics (math, physics, biology, interactive art, cooking, automation, and more...) you want to bring to life!

Technical Details

Each board has 5 inputs and 5 outputs, and a full kit comes with a variety of each (knobs, buttons, speakers, lights, servos, and more). These can be easily combined in countless ways and programmed using the Teagueduino software and then shared with the community to use and build on.

One full Teagueduino kit contains:

1 Teagueduino main board with Teensy++ loaded and ready to go.
Inputs wired and ready to use (2 buttons, 2 potentiometers/knobs, 1 switch, 1 magnetic field sensor, 1 light sensor, 1 temperature sensor)
Outputs wired and ready to use (2 piezo speakers, 1 red LED, 1 green LED, 1 blue LED, 1 Vibration motor)
Servo bundle (2 servos, 1 servo power-up board, 1 5V DC power supply)

Source: Kickstarter site

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teague/teagueduino-learn-to-make?ref=NewsSep1511&utm_campaign=Sep15&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter]

Interactive T-shirts by Think Geek!

2011-09-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

Check these out -- e-textiles are just booming!

See this shirt and even a proximity sensing t-shirt at: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/interactive/

Leaf Planetarium Lets You Watch The Stars From Bed

2011-09-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

Leaf Planetarium Lets You Watch The Stars From Bed

At This Girls’ Camp, Crafts Take a Drill Press

2011-08-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: August 18, 2011 New York Times

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

Campers touring a materials testing lab watched as a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen was crushed.

Though the slim, 5-foot-5 teenager dreams of becoming a basketball star, Nautika now has a backup plan after her weeklong immersion course: a career in manufacturing.

Just over a quarter of the 11.7 million workers in manufacturing are women. But Gadget Camp, a workshop for girls in this suburb west of Chicago, is part of an effort to change that.

Although the economy is wobbling and nearly 14 million people are looking for work, some employers are still having a hard time finding skilled workers for certain positions. Manufacturers in particular complain that few applicants can operate computerized equipment, read blueprints and solve production problems. And with the baby boomers starting to retire, these and other employers worry there will be few young workers willing or able to replace them.

Gadget Camp, sponsored in part by a foundation affiliated with the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, which provided financing to nine other camps this summer, is intended to help over the long haul by exposing girls to an occupation they might previously have considered unappealing, if they considered it at all.

By the last day of camp, Nautika had told her parents that manufacturing was “cool.” Fashioning a lamp shade out of a thin piece of cardboard, she mused, “I have two good careers ahead of me.” Since the fragile recovery began, manufacturing is one of the few sectors that have added jobs. But the image of manufacturing as an occupation of the future has been tarnished by the exodus of factory jobs to foreign sites and the use of machinery to replace workers. Younger people, especially, see more alluring opportunities in digital technology, finance or health care.

“The perception is that there are no jobs in manufacturing,” said Susan H. Palisano, director of education and training at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, a nonprofit group in East Hartford that promotes manufacturing employment and has run summer programs for middle-school students for the last three years. “It seems that everybody had an uncle or grandfather that got laid off.”

Across the country, a handful of companies, nonprofit groups, public educational agencies and even science museums are trying to make manufacturing seem, well, fun. Focusing mainly on children aged 10 to 17, organizations including the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pa.; and Stihl, a maker of chain saws and other outdoor power equipment in Virginia Beach, Va., run camps that let students operate basic machinery, meet workers and make things.

Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs, the foundation that helped sponsor the Gadget camp in River Grove, has awarded $2,500 grants to 112 manufacturing-themed camps — most of them for boys and girls — around the country since 2004. “It’s not easy getting people into the career field,” said Marcia Arndt, a board member of the foundation. “I think there’s a myth out there that manufacturing is dirty and undesirable, but it’s really highly technological.”

Impressions also persist that manufacturing is a man’s job. Technical fields in general, and those that require scientific or mathematical backgrounds, are indeed dominated by men. Yet a Commerce Department report released early this month showed that women in such fields earn 33 percent more, on average, than women working outside of scientific and technical fields, a higher premium than men enjoy in similar occupations.

Antigone Sharris, who came up with the idea for the all-girls Gadget camp, had worked extensively in manufacturing before becoming an instructor in electronics, welding and computer-aided machinery at Triton College, a two-year public school here that provided some funding for the camp.

Ms. Sharris is a mentor to high school robotics teams and wants to encourage young women to consider a range of technically oriented careers. “Girls don’t naturally gravitate toward engineering,” said Ms. Sharris, a jolly and patient instructor who interspersed practical tips on using a band saw or a drill press with casual explanations of fractions, the concept of leverage and Newton’s laws.

In a windowless classroom and shop on Triton’s scruffy campus, 16 girls aged 11 to 15 designed and constructed a cat feeder, a candy dispenser and various pieces of jewelry and music boxes, using foam board, wood, metal, fiberglass and PVC pipe.

“Not letting your children learn the hands-on component of the theory of science is killing us as a nation,” Ms. Sharris said. “You have to stop giving kids books and start giving them tools.”

To give the girls a concrete sense of what such skills could mean in the workplace, Ms. Sharris invited a human resources coordinator from a local manufacturer to tell them about salaries — starting in the $40,000 range and moving up to six digits, including overtime.

Several of the campers came from low-income and minority communities near the college. Only five of the 16 girls at the camp had paid the $99 fee; the rest were subsidized.

While Ms. Sharris focused mostly on basic technical skills, factory tours aimed at introducing the girls to modern manufacturing work brought out talk that might have fit at a nationalist rally.

During a tour of Tru-Way, which produces precision metal parts, Stan Mastalerz, the company’s president, showed the girls a tiny component used in electronic circuit boards.

Ms. Sharris jumped in. “See that?” she asked. “This is something that might be in your Game Boy that you don’t even know about. The game may be made in China, but there are pieces that are made right here in your backyard.”

The reality of factory life gave a few girls pause. Visiting Tru-Way on a scorching summer afternoon, they noted the extreme heat and noise of the shop floor.

Brittany Orr, 15, who asked questions and jotted notes, said she liked the tasks that involved some thought and analysis. But “I would not want to do a job where you just do the same thing again,” she said. “It seems tedious.”

A tour of MSi Testing & Engineering, a small company in Melrose Park, Ill., that evaluates the strength and quality of metal materials used by manufacturers, showed that it offered more of the work she preferred.

In the end, the campers learned lessons in persistence and problem-solving as well as technical skills. When Nautika began building the lamp she had designed, she wanted to install a rotating shade.

Ms. Sharris brought out a tiny motor. “What you are trying to figure out is what to use to make your lampshade so that it will spin,” she said.

Ms. Sharris rejected Nautika’s first suggestion of foam board: too heavy. Ms. Sharris recommended a simple piece of copier paper, then spied a paper plate on a table. “Humor me,” she said, showing Nautika how to affix the motor to the plate with generous daubs from a glue gun.

Next came wiring a battery. To tutor Nautika in basic electronics, Ms. Sharris recruited Ariana Vargas, a 17-year-old counselor who has competed on her robotics team. Ariana demonstrated how to strip the green coating from the electrical wires with pliers. On Nautika’s first try, the whole tip broke off.

A few fumbles later, Nautika was frustrated. “I don’t know how you did it!” she said.

Ariana replied, “Practice, practice and more practice.”

Finally, the coating came off, exposing bare wire. Her confidence building, Nautika stripped another wire and slid both ends through a PVC pipe and connected them to the battery.

The plate began to spin.

“Yea!” Nautika exclaimed. “I did it.”

Lights out: Ump halts game, instructs fans to dim their clothing

2011-08-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

It may stand as the oddest request ever made by a major league umpire:

Hey fellas, could you please turn off your jackets?

Yet that's exactly what the crew working the Oakland Athletics-Baltimore Orioles game on Tuesday night had to ask as two men wearing LED-laced clothing sat behind the plate at the Coliseum. With one wearing the green glow of the A's logo on his chest and the other sporting Orioles orange, the pair were very visible from the playing field.

Watch blue flip the switch as Oakland's pro-neon crowd boos: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Lights-out-Ump-halts-game-instructs-fans-to-di?urn=mlb-wp16203

Had these two men not been sitting in Tony Randazzo's line of sight as he worked second base, I'm guessing they would have been fine and Fashion Ump would not have ruled it a faux pas. Then again, given Oakland's small crowd, it's kind of hard to attend a game in such a flashy coat and not be noticed.

I'm not going to lie, either: After seeing this clip, I kind of want one now. If these jackets were actually made by these two guys, they could have quite a fashion hit on their hands.

By 'Duk

Idle Pastime: In Off Hours, Truckers Pick Up Stitching

2011-08-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

With Less to Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies; Quilting in the Cab

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

WALCOTT, Iowa—Semi driver Dave White happily sequestered himself in his rig at a truck stop on a rural stretch of Interstate 80, waiting to pick up his next haul: 45,000 pounds of Spam. He used to loathe the downtime in his job.

Then, he bought a sewing machine.

For long-haul trucker Dave White, there's more to life on the road than finding a good rest stop. There's quilting. WSJ's Jennifer Levitz reports.

Since last year, when the economy left drivers with fewer hauls, Mr. White, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound ex-Air Force mechanic with a bushy mustache, has hunkered down inside his truck in his many off hours, making quilts from patterns with names like "Meet Me In Paris." When he's not sewing, he's daydreaming about it, he said as he ran a square of yellow cotton with little violets through his machine. "Oh, there's many a time you're just going down the road at O-dark-thirty in the morning and you just start thinking about a particular pattern."

Some truckers are finding themselves with more spare time on the road. Loads of goods delivered by truckers fell 15% in 2009, to 170 million loads, the largest drop in modern history, said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations. That came on top of a slow downswing in hauls because of what the industry laments as "miniaturization" of goods: It takes less space to move flat-screen TVs and iPods than their clunkier predecessors.

With declining freight, truckers who drive hundreds of miles to make a delivery may not immediately have a load lined up for the return trip. So they bide time at truck stops, where they can shower, dine and sleep in their rigs. A couple of years ago, a driver might drop off a load and pick up a new one in two hours; now the wait can be two days, said Mr. Costello.

Though evidence is anecdotal, industry groups and trucking-company owners say the increase in spare time has spawned more hobbies. "We've got guys who are into opera, photography, skydiving," said Norita Taylor, spokeswoman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers' Association, a truckers' group.

Mr. White's employer, Iowa-based Don Hummer Trucking Corp., last year started a loosely organized "sewing club," and encourages drivers who are nimble with a needle to show off their handiwork at headquarters. "We want them to pass the time to make themselves happy, rather than get frustrated waiting," said Dena Boelter, Hummer's human-resources manager, an avid sewer who calls the hobby a great stress reliever that can be done almost anywhere.

Kevin Abraham-Banks, a 37-year-old trucker with a shaved head and dragon tattoos, passes time at truck stops with his cocoa and knitting.

View Full Image

Gretchen Abraham-Banks

Kevin Abraham-Banks, a Sioux Falls, S.D., trucker, likes to knit while passing the time on the road. Here he makes a sweater for his wife.

Mr. Banks, who lives in Sioux Falls, S.D., and hauls romaine lettuce between California and the Midwest, learned to knit last year after load-volumes slowed. Creating something tangible beats sitting around the truck stop "talking about who has a bigger radio," he said. He's finished a scarf and socks, and is working on a sweater for his wife.

"The fact that you can take strands of thread and basically make something out of it, that's awesome I think," he said. "It's pretty cool stuff, man."

Still, trucking can be a macho world that doesn't feel conducive to knitting or sewing. Some 95% of truckers are men, said the ATA. At the Iowa-80 Truck Stop, whose signs bill it as the "World's Largest Truckstop," a top request at the theater is for "Smokey and the Bandit" and the on-site dentist, Thomas Roemer, often sees drivers only after they've tried to yank their teeth out themselves. Crafting with fabric and yarn is "nothing I would do—my mom does that," said Mark Sanchez, 47, a long-haul trucker.

Thomas McConnaughy, a married grandfather from Hemet, Calif., hauls cereal, reads his Bible, plays Sudoku, and talks trout fishing at truck stops. He doesn't let on to other drivers that he keeps 15 coils of yarn in his cab and makes what he describes as "really cute slippers."

"In the truck stops, it's usually a bunch of guys watching football," he said. "If I sat down with my knitting, I think there would be some funny remarks."

Mr. White, the quilter, who is 53, came to his new passion last summer after feeling he was wasting time "waiting on freight."

He drove 2,600 miles a week on average in 2009, versus 3,200 in 2008, even though he spent the same amount of time—about three weeks at a stretch—on the road.

He struggled to find a hobby, having burned out on reading. He tried carting along a remote-controlled helicopter, but it kept falling on him from a shelf in the truck. His wife, Dee, an accountant at their home in Colorado Springs, Colo., is a quilter and suggested he try it. By August, they had outfitted his truck's sleeper cabin with a $179 sewing machine, supplies, and a starter's pattern. "Boy, let me tell you, I created a monster," she said.

Since then, Mr. White has made seven quilt tops, which are finished with a filling and backing between trips. He spends three hours a day on his hobby, sitting on his bed, with his sewing machine next to his mini-fridge. Flowered "project boxes" sit next to neat stacks of blue jeans and baseball caps. Quilting, he said, "gives you a little bit of ownership. You've actually accomplished something with your time off."

He pulled over once to visit the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Ky., and if time allows, visits fabric stores in towns he rolls through.

In his truck, he showed a quilt with illustrations of fruit, and emphasized the importance of strategically placing quilt blocks so that "you don't get three lemons in a row or two plums in a row."

His blue eyes widened behind his glasses as he moved to the topic of thread. "There is a variegated thread that goes purple to white then back to purple," he said. "Oh! Just beautiful."

Article from WSJ

Thanks to Kristin Searle for the pointer to this article

Barbie Girl Video

2011-08-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

Find out more at http://www.barbie.com/videogirl/

Not sure what to make of this but had to post ...

Deja Vu Intelligent Purse: A purse that remembers when you can't

2011-08-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

Deja Vu front with pressure switch

First there was the Know-It-All Knitting Bag, created by Kalani Craig using the LilyPad Arduino..."It knows your row number, the chart for your stitch pattern, and where you are in that stitch pattern." For those of us who are constantly searching for our keys in a big seemingly bottomless purse wondering "Did I even put my keys in my purse?" comes the aptly named Deja Vu intelligent purse which can scan up to 5 tagged items in your bag to answer that mind boggling question. Designers Heidi Chen and Nicole Tariverdian, use a slight squeeze to a pressure switch to respond on the five LED display to signal which items are in the bag.

Inside showing the LilyPad Arduino

For a video demo of the bag, details on how to make the bag, including the Arduino code visit: http://newtextiles.media.mit.edu/?p=3049

Made of Paper, Microsoft’s “Printing Dress” Displays Tweets as Public Art

2011-08-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

You’re probably familiar with the saying “you are what you eat,” but you are what you tweet? That’s the idea behind the “Printing Dress,” a high-tech frock designed to explore the impact of wearable text on fashion and social identity. Built almost entirely of paper (irony alert!) by Asta Roseway, a senior designer at Microsoft Research, and Sheridan Martin Small from Xbox, the dress allows you to type out the pithiest of thoughts and wear them as public art.

New ProtoSnap - LilyPad E-Sewing Kits!

2011-08-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

New product line aims to enable beginners in programming, prototyping and designing with electronics

PR Newswire

BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com), a provider of parts, knowledge and passion for electronics creation, today announced a new line of products designed to help the novice electronics enthusiast ease into the world of programming, prototyping and design.
Each product in the new ProtoSnap line features various input and output boards that are linked together, complete with traces, to form a multi-use prototyping platform. This allows users to experiment with embedded electronics without the burden of soldering, wires or other typical prototyping limitations.
There currently are three different products in the ProtoSnap line - the ProtoSnap Pro Mini, the ProtoSnap LilyPad Development Board and the ProtoSnap LilyPad E-sewing kit.
The Pro Mini combines an Arduino Pro Mini with a host of inputs and outputs to allow users to experiment with the Arduino language. When they have mastered programming the ProtoSnap Pro Mini, it can be broken apart so the individual components can be used separately. Both the ProtoSnap LilyPad Development Board and the ProtoSnap LilyPad E-sewing kits are designed to help users ease into e-textiles. They, too, can be broken apart into individual components and used in any number of different projects and applications.
"The ProtoSnap line is really designed with the beginner in mind," said SparkFun Engineer Ryan Owens. "We really think it will help introduce people to prototyping in an easy-to-understand and user-friendly way."
While the ProtoSnap line currently has three products, the range of possibilities for expansion is endless. SparkFun is excited to see the implications this new product holds for beginner electronics enthusiasts and hopes the ProtoSnap line will introduce a new group of people to the wonders of embedded electronics.
For more information, visit (www.sparkfun.com).

Back to the Simple Life, With Needle and Thread

2011-08-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Sarah Kate Beaumont practicing her craft.

By LIZ ROBBINS

Published: August 5, 2011

WALK into the modest railroad-style brownstone apartment and it feels less like Brooklyn and more like stepping off the steam train into “Little House on the Park Slope Prairie.”

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Part of Ms. Beaumont's space at Very Sweet Life Studio in Brooklyn.

Enlarge This Image

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Elizabeth Cline studying Ms. Beaumont's work on a pillow pattern.

Floppy felt hats with broad rims gather like old friends on an antique green rack, greeting visitors at the door. Simple striped yellow, white and gray curtains adorn the front windows.

In the middle room, linen and raw-silk blankets sit with seersucker pillowcases atop cotton sheets. A white linen pinafore dress with a ruffled chiffon hem hangs in the sparse closet next to a flamenco flannel skirt and dozens of other colorful creations. T-shirts, tank tops and lingerie are folded into neat squares on small shelves, and wooden hooks hold just-worn items.

A wicker basket on the floor fills with laundry that never felt so satisfying.

Sarah Kate Beaumont sewed all of these items one by one over the past three years in what began as an experiment of self-reliance and artistic whimsy and has now blossomed into a way of life.

That life may hark back to pioneer days, but Ms. Beaumont is not homesteading alone.

Brooklyn, fiercely proud of its independence from Manhattan, is an expanding frontier for the Do It Yourself movement — resourceful residents are baking bread, raising chickens for eggs, keeping bees for honey or simply renovating brownstones themselves. Ms. Beaumont, a shy woman in her early 40s with auburn curls, settles as comfortably into that ethos as she does into her flowing dresses.

“I never intended to do it this long,” she said softly on a recent afternoon. “I think it speaks to how good it feels. Self-reliance is really empowering.”

Ms. Beaumont began sewing to live in the summer of 2008, when after eight years of teaching art in the city’s public and private schools, she decided to become a full-time artist. Her dream was to share her craft by teaching adult sewing classes. Because the timing coincided with the financial collapse, she altered the dream with common sense.

“I decided,” she said, “that I would make anything I needed.”

She started with the lingerie. A flowing skirt led to a pair of pajamas. Aprons, stuffed animals, raincoats, sheets, terry cloth towels and curtains followed. She makes everything she wears save the odd pair of jeans, socks and shoes.

Ms. Beaumont likes to call her project “Slow Clothes,” after the Slow Food movement promoting the homegrown.

Ms. Beaumont recycles material from old items or buys fabric relatively inexpensively in Manhattan in the garment district. It usually takes her two to three weeks to finish a dress, a few hours for underwear.

Two years ago, she decided to put a label on her items, “verysweetlife,” with the inscription, “Handmade in Brooklyn.” She has yet to market that label, though she says she is ready to start. There is one nagging issue: pricing.

“How do you take something that you’ve spent a tremendous amount of time and effort on and put a price on it?” she said. “Each piece is unique. That’s one thing about making everything you wear — nobody will ever be wearing what you are wearing.”

In the meantime, Ms. Beaumont supports herself with sewing classes, for which she charges $65 to $500, depending on the length of the course, and offers private lessons as well.

Tamara Mose Brown, an assistant professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, who lives in Kensington, says Ms. Beaumont exemplifies the economic growth occurring in Brooklyn, driven by small businesses, restaurants and clothing shops. “Brooklynites are feeling that they want to have this identity away from Manhattan and the air of consumerism,” Professor Brown said. “There’s this element of self-preservation and economic sustainability.”

In her intimate second-floor sewing studio in Boerum Hill, outfitted with five Kenmore sewing machines and filled with rulers, patterns and dress forms, Ms. Beaumont teaches adults — lawyers, writers, grandmothers and others — fractions, geometry and remedial cutting in order to master patternmaking.

“It is not a sign of intelligence how hard it is to cut or measure,” she assured three students working on a pillow pattern last month in her studio.

Harriet Clemons, 54, of Crown Heights, was taking the three-week course so she could make clothes for her grandchildren. Kate Clifford, 28, works at a SoHo knitting shop and wanted to expand her repertoire. One of her roommates in Kensington sells homemadevegan muffins.

Elizabeth Cline, 30, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, is writing a book about budget fashion and the declining price of clothing, and hoped to supplement her own wardrobe.

“It’s encouraging that you can actually make things that are better or at least the level of what stores are selling,” Ms. Cline said.

Ms. Beaumont never followed the crowd, growing up in Pittsburgh embroidering, and enjoying the meals made by her mother, a chef and a baker. She majored in English literature at Bryn Mawr College, where she rode a unicycle in leggings and a skirt.

Every day she kisses her sleek white high-tech Bernina sewing machine, next to which she has meticulously organized bobbins by color, and spools of thread. Although hers is an intense, solitary passion, it is also meditative, in sync with much of the D.I.Y. culture.

“It’s hands on, getting back to the basics,” Ms. Brown said, “and it makes people feel that they are not falling victim to the machine.”

Unless, of course, it’s a white Kenmore.

“These are adults who hold their pillows and beam, they are so proud of themselves,” Ms. Beaumont said with a twinkle. “That’s how I feel a lot of the time. It’s not ego-driven pride, but I look in the mirror and say, ‘I can do this.’ ”

Yarnana -- A Love Story

2011-07-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

“LOST ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK, A CROCHET GIRL MUST DECIDE

WHAT’S REAL BEFORE HER CROCHET WORLD UNRAVELS.”

YARNANA is an explosive narrative film, featuring the “Crochet Madness” of New York artist, Olek. Inspired by the silent film genre, it relies solely on powerful music, sound design and physical expression. The characters speak through modern dance, physical comedy, capoeira, martial arts, poi, belly dancing, breakdance, acrobatics, gymnastics and the instincts of soul searchers.

YARNANA is 20 minutes of romance and adventure where traditional storytelling becomes unraveled...

http://vimeo.com/25110105

Personal fabrication

2011-06-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

CACM, October 2010

Personal fabrication

Open source 3D printers could herald the start of a new industrial revolution.

While AttenDinG A health and beauty trade show in the fall of 2009, Nick Starno watched as countless exhibitors

struggled with cosmetic tubes, vainly at- tempting to squeeze the last few drops out of them. Starno, however, is a me- chanical design engineer, and familiar with 3D printers. When he got home, he designed a tube squeezer and posted his prototype on a community Web site for 3D printer designs. Within hours, several 3D printer enthusiasts in Europe had downloaded his design and manu- factured the tube squeezer. Since then, Starno’s design has been downloaded more than 500 times and people around the world have produced his tube squeezer at a cost about 30 cents each.

“I knew that as long as I could model it on the computer, it could be made,” says Starno, who now works with Mak- erbot, a 3D printer company. “No worry- ing about tooling costs, post processing, surface finishes, packaging, shipping quantities, or advertising. Anyone with a 3D printer could search for my design, download it, and make one on demand without ever leaving their house.”

Printing simple devices such as tube squeezers might not seem very excit- ing or sexy, but it heralds the begin- ning of a technological revolution in- volving thousands of hobbyists around the world who are using 3D printers to fabricate wine glasses, toy cars, cooling fans, mechanical arms, and countless types of nuts, bolts, and gears.

To many observers, this revolution mirrors the personal computer revo- lution, with its kits for hobbyists, of the 1970s. “There are many parallels between personal computing and per- sonal fabrication,” says Hod Lipson, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and computing and information science at Cornell Uni- versity. “I think you can look at the histo- ry of computers and how they changed our world, and you can anticipate many

nick Starno, a mechanical design engineer, in the process of building a 3D printer.

aspects of 3D printing and how they will interface with every aspect of our lives.”

open Source Printers

While large-scale, commercial 3D print- ers have existed for years, personal 3D printers are a recent, fast-spreading phe- nomenon. Dozens of startup companies are developing and marketing 3D print- ers, but two of the most widely used 3D printers are open source projects.

Based at the University of Bath, Rep- Rap is the brainchild of Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in the department of me- chanical engineering. The other project is Fab@Home, which is led by Lipson.

To design a printable object, a user needs a computer equipped with a com- puter-assisted design (CAD) program. The different RepRap and Fab@Home 3D printers are the size of a standard office photocopier, and feature off-the- shelf components including a chas- sis, tool heads, and electronics. The 3D printers work almost the same as a

standard printer, but instead of using multi-colored inks, a printer’s mobile arm includes a syringe that ejects melt- ed plastic, slowly building up the “im- age,” layer after layer, into a real object. Simple objects like a gear, for instance, can be completed in less than an hour.

The parts for the latest RepRap print- er, Mendel, cost about $525, but an online network of artists and inventors are constantly modifying and improv- ing Mendel’s design. Moreover, Mendel prints about 50% of its own parts, ex- cluding nuts and bolts, so it is almost a self-replicating machine.

“It’s designed to copy itself because that’s the most efficient way of getting a large number of them out there,” says Bowyer, who estimates more than 4,000 RepRap printers have been made since the plans for the original RepRap Dar- win printer were first released in 2008. “If you’ve got something that copies it- self, then, in principle, the numbers can grow exponentially fast, and that’s fast-

14 communicationS of the acm | OcTOber 2010 | VOL. 53 | nO. 10

PhotograPh by bre Pettiser than any other means of production that humanity currently has.”

new Design frontiers

In addition to enabling people to manu- facture objects they never could before, 3D printers could lead to radically new designs that are not possible with tra- ditional fabrication techniques. “Your first instinct when you have one of these machines is that instead of making something in the machine shop, you are just going to print it,” says Lipson. “But at some point you realize you can make new things with complicated geometry that you cannot make any other way. You don’t have to stick to straight edges and flat surfaces that can be easily ma- chined or thin walls that can be injec- tion molded. You can make absolutely any shape that you want.”

For instance, Lipson’s team has ex- perimented with printing objects with both hard and soft materials. When the materials are printed at a random 50%- 50% ratio, the results are ordinary. How- ever, when the dots of hard and soft ma- terial are printed in special patterns, the material, when stretched like an elastic, actually gets thicker.

Indeed, one of Lipson’s favorite 3D printer materials is Play-Doh. He re- cently used it to create miniature copies of the U.S. space shuttle during a school visit as part of the Fab@School project, led by himself and Glen Bull, a professor of instructional technology at the Uni- versity of Virginia. The Fab@School’s goal is to use 3D printers to show K–12

Crowdsourcing

students the combined power of math, science, and engineering. The MacAr- thur Foundation and Motorola have awarded $435,000 to the Fab@School group to develop curriculum, build more 3D printers, and expand the project.

a Larger ink Palette

Although Play-Doh and other squishy substances can be used in 3D printers, melted plastic remains the primary material. Other desirable materials, in- cluding various metals and ceramics, are more challenging to use. Progress has been made in printing with metal, but more experimentation is needed to make the process easier and overcome fundamental properties in the materi- als like melting point and viscosity.

For Lipson’s Fab@Home project, the ultimate goal is to design a robot that can walk out of the printer. Before that can happen, “inks” for batteries, actua- tors, wires, transistors, and numerous other pieces must be developed. How- ever, Lipson’s lab has already developed an actuator that operates with low volt- age and a printable battery.

Adrian Bowyer at the University of Bath has had success making a print- able conductor that melts at a lower temperature than the plastic does. Due to the temperature difference, the 3D printer can manufacture plastic chan- nels that do not melt when filled with the hot conductor for wires or other electrical circuitry.

“At the moment the way we manu- facture goods is from economies of

scale,” says Bowyer. “It is more efficient to make lots of one thing in one place and that’s how conventional industry works all over the world. But there are many things we used to do that way that we don’t do anymore. For instance, I’m old enough to remember my parents getting personalized letterhead printed at a local printer, whereas now we have computer printers. Imagine the idea of a whole industry disappearing, and ev- erybody making what they want in their own home. That would be a pretty pro- found economic change.”

You’re Never Too Old to Learn Shoemaking

2011-05-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

A class on historic gastronomy at the Brooklyn Brainery, which offers cheap, low-commitment classes on a variety of topics, like tying knots.

By AMANDA PETRUSICH

Published: May 12, 2011

LEARNING should be a lifelong pursuit. But between the cost of tuition and dark memories of failure at the blackboard, formally committing to edification can be daunting.

Now a different approach is gaining traction in New York and beyond, one that should spare most of us that humiliating hike from the blackboard to our desks. The movement — sometimes called collaborative learning — is showcased by Web sites like unclasses.org (connecting “people who want to learn about a topic with those in their area who want to teach it”) and projects like Trade School, where, since last year, instructors have bartered courses for things like mixed CDs and blocks of cheddar cheese. The overarching principle: We’ve all got something to learn — and we’ve all got something to teach.

Squishy Circuits

2011-05-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

In a zippy demo at TED U, AnnMarie Thomas shows how two different kinds of homemade play dough can be used to demonstrate electrical properties -- by lighting up LEDs, spinning motors, and turning little kids into circuit designers.

http://www.ted.com/talks/annmarie_thomas_squishy_circuits.html

LilyPad design lights up the runway

2011-04-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

LilyPad/fiber optic design created for Anna Reutinger’s fashion line - GMA

Dennis Cao, an electrical engineering student at UCLA, mixed the LilyPad with nine Red Green Blue (RGB) LED’s to emit a wide range of colors through fiber optic strands flowing out of a white halter style dress.

He writes "The code is fairly simple and I thought I’d share it (along with the assembly instructions) since the only documentation I’ve found online has been linearly fading LED’s, which doesn’t look as great in my opinion. My code uses pulse width modulation to fade in and out of different colors at a sinusoidal rate- (essentially this means turning on/off the LED at varying amounts, a brighter appearance meant that the LED was HIGH or ON at more times per second, increasing the frequency of the signal. )"

For his code and instructions go to http://redlobsta.tumblr.com/

Textile Messages Symposium

2011-04-23T16:50:00.001-07:00

On Friday, April 22, 2011 we held a "Textile Messages" symposium at the University of Pennsylvania, Skirkanich Hall. Yasmin Kafai, Michael Eisenberg, Kylie Peppler, Leah Buechley, Maggie Orth, and Joanne Berzowka all presented, followed by an exhibit of electronic textiles. We showed a range of e-textiles from novice designs to high end art, discussed issues of gender, learning, and crafts, and contemplated what educational technology could be.

A number of people from education, art, hacktory, computer science, engineering, and information studies joined us to discuss recent developments in technology and education.

Kate Hartman, Diane Glosson, Kristin Searle, Corrie Tice, and Deborah Fields were also there displaying, discussing, and wearing e-textiles.

2011-04-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Adventures in E-Textiles.

In honor of our "Textile Messages" symposium tomorrow, I made a special, fading, Poppy Necklace. The lights on each flower are sewn in parallel and connected to the Lilypad Simple Board. Using ModKit Alpha (beta doesn't have variables yet), I programmed them to fade with the analogwrite command and adding 5 points to the brightness scale (from 0-255).

I used layers of felt to keep the circuits insulated from each other - a handy trick that also added some solidity to the otherwise thin felt. In a nod to Leah Buechley's writing about moving from the invisible to the visible in engineering, I'm showing a picture of the back. As you may guess, a lot is insulated between the layers, but you can see the final circuit completed by connecting the smallest flower to the pins on the Lilypad that power it.

More pictures can be found on the Lilypond site and on my personal blog.

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

2011-04-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

http://crochetcoralreef.org/about/index.php

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.

Created and curated by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring.

"Crochet Coral and Anemone Garden" with sea slug by Marianne Midelburg.
Photos © The IFF by Alyssa Gorelick.

One of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches along the coast of Queensland, Australia, in a riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile monster that scientists now believe the reef will be devastated in coming years. As a homage to the Great One, Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring instigated a project to crochet a woolen reef.

...The inspiration for making crochet reef forms begins with the technique of "hyperbolic crochet" discovered in 1997 by Cornell University mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina. The Wertheim sisters adopted Dr Taimina's techniques and elaborated upon them to develop a whole taxonomy of reef-life forms. Loopy "kelps", fringed "anemones", crenelated "sea slugs", and curlicued "corals" have all been modeled with these methods. The basic process for making these forms is a simple pattern or algorithm, which on its own produces a mathematically pure shape, but by varying or mutating this algorithm, endless variations and permutations of shape and form can be produced. The Crochet Reef project thus becomes an on-going evolutionary experiment in which the worldwide community of Reefers brings into being an ever-evolving crochet "tree of life." ...

Large scale anemone with brain coral head by Margaret Wertheim.

A Career Woven from Life in NYT

2011-04-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

ON my first visit to the American artistSheila Hicks’s home and studio here, I brought my 7-year-old son, at Ms. Hicks’s suggestion. “Tell him you’re going on a treasure hunt,” she had instructed me. In fact, the Cour de Rohan, where Ms. Hicks has lived since 1970 — a tranquil, picturesque cobblestone courtyard tucked away behind the multiplexes of the Place de l’Odéon — was only the first of many remarkable finds that day. Read more at

Textiles & Felt Workshop at the Penn Museum

2011-04-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

WIRED 19.4 How to make stuff

2011-04-03T15:15:00.001-07:00

Textile Messages Symposium April 22 in Philadelphia

2011-03-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

TEI2011: Calling all Superheros to the Design Challenge

2011-03-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

The world could always use a new Superhero and 12 teams (see team list and superhero name and powers at: http://www.tei-conf.org/11/participation_/design-challenge/) rose to the task to design costumes and superhero tools at the Fifth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction in Portugal.

Three teams walked away the winners of $1,000 each:

Category of inventiveness: superhero Captain Chronomek from the Simon Fraser University team (whose first superhero battle was with the Portuguese airport security for two days)
Superhero Description: Once a humble industrial-revolution machinist, Skip Sprocket was transformed into Captain Chronomek: the Continuum’s top Post-Victorian-Pre-Singularity agent. A flying, time-traveling MacGyver, Captain Chronomek hacks the timeline with the technology of the past to prevent a dark future.
Team members: Joshua Tanenbaum, Karen Tanenbaum and Allen Bevans.
See more on Captain Chronomek at: http://www.siat.sfu.ca/news/2011/535/

Category quality of execution: superhero Axon from the Technical University Eindhoven team. (Axon used only one LilyPad Arduino to run the 260 LEDs and 52 reed switches which consequentially required them to include 7 input and 7 output shift registers.)
Superhero Description: With his body being an endless source of energy, Axon defeats his enemies by collecting, directing and releasing that energy through a strong blast that wipes away everything on it’s path.
Team members: Jacquelyn van Kampen, Joost Aanen, Marianne Akker and Koen Beljaars
See more on Axon at: http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/super-hero-design-challenge and
http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/homebrew-superh.php

Category for presentation and style: superhero Godmode from Bauhaus University Weimar team
Superhero Description: The results achieved were the consequence of invention pure and simple.
Team members: Daniel Wessolek, Jamie L. Ferguson and Jörg Brinkmann

To watch a video with all 12 of the Superheros in action visit: http://vimeo.com/19781019

Congratulations to all twelve teams!

If only Dorothy & Toto had this Find Home Detector....

2011-03-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

This gives new meaning to follow the light...literally! The Find Home Detector is used to find the designers' way home, using an LED compass as the path to follow. The device uses a LilyPad, GPS, an actual compass and some LEDs. Using the GPS to get a position and then calculate the direction to the location of the home. The compass is then used to get their heading so it is possible to indicate the direction to travel. See the full post & video at http://www.slickstreamer.info/2011_02_01_archive.html

Love the environmentally friendly design diagram

LilyPad Arduino Wireless Dance Costume Performance @ Indiana University

2011-03-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

This 6 minute dance video of a performance at Indiana University's Buskirk-Chumley Theatre illustrates the power and versatility of the LilyPad components. Eric Lindsay, the composer of "The Space Between Us" explains: "The costumes are embedded with LilyPad Ardino technology; One of the dancers' (with the round skirt) costume combines LilyPad components and a XBee (wireless transmitter) together with pressure and flex sensors connected by conductive thread, which detects and transmits the movements of the dancer to the composer's laptop, which are then used to generate and control sound within a MAX/MSP environment."

What this means is choreographers and dancers are no longer constrained within the parameters of the music, instead they are the musical creators through their movements. See http://vimeo.com/20403708 for the complete posting and to view this amazing performance, choreographed by Utam Moses.

Philadelphia Schools explore the learning connection between Making & Writing

2011-01-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

Teachers & students as Makers - Taking "How To" to the next level

Including a reference to Dale Dougherty of Make magazine

Sparkfun's 2 Day E-Textile Workshop this weekend!

2011-01-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

SparkFun is in for a special treat on the weekend of January 15th! Our E-Textile guru, Lynne Bruning, has arranged an awesome Two Day E-Textile Workshop: Where Electronics Meet Textiles at Sparkfun headquarters. Not only will you learn all about electronics, textiles, computers and fashion, you will meet colleagues, innovators and leaders in the rapidly evolving landscape of wearable computing.

Troy Nachtigall will be visiting us from Florence, Italy to share his expertise in E-Textiles. He is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and has worked with EU based Plug and Wear to develop E-Textile sensors, fabrics and wearable computing projects. Troy teaches courses in Fashion and Technology at the University IUAV of Venice, University Sapienza of Roma, the Institute of European Design, and ISIA Firenze.

Also joining them will be Special Guest: Nwanua Elumeze, founder of Aniomagic, who will share his company’s hardware advancements in eTextiles. http://www.aniomagic.com/store/index.php?p=2&q=16

Sunday will be devoted to creating a wearable technology project culminating in a uStream fashion show and live chat. Be sure to log in on January 16th at 4pm Boulder time!

See full post at http://www.sparkfun.com/news/512

Fun in the snow!

2011-01-14T19:42:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are tired of the snow...try out what Sarah Angliss did..."For some Christmas fun, I added ten bright, white LEDs to the petticoat 0f this 1950s-style dress so I could move around parties in my own pool of light. You can see the dress in action in this video, taken in Brighton on a very snowy night in 2010. I was inspired by the electric ladies who used to perform in dresses festooned with lightbulbs, at the turn of the twentieth century."

"The LEDs are controlled by a Lilypad Arduino which lights them up in sequence. I’ve also connected a cheap accelerometer to the Arduino (just like the one you find inside an iPhone or Nintendo wii) so the circuit can tell when I’m moving."

Read her entire post and see her dress in action at: http://www.sarahangliss.com/exhibits/electric-dress

Arduino the documentary

2011-01-14T18:48:00.000-08:00

Fascinating documentary by Rodrigo Calvo and Raúl Alaejos about Arduino open source software and how it came to be, along with the development of the boards into what is now a blooming field of opportunity for beginners. No doubt you'll be familiar with some of the players interviewed...including David Mellis, graduate student in Leah Buechley's MIT High Low Tech Lab!

View the 28 minute documentary at: http://gizmodo.com/5734025/everything-worth-knowing-about-arduino

The documentary is also available at Vimeo (EN, ES) and it can be download from Archive.org (EN, ES). The file is licensed under CC-SA 3.0 and can be redistributed.

Smart Clothing

2011-01-07T04:34:00.000-08:00

From University of Minnesota Fashion Design

http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2010/UR_CONTENT_212784.html

Smart clothing

Technology expands what clothing can do

Lucy Dunne believes that before long we will see normal clothing that responds to our moods and needs.

Clothing that solves problems
Dunne, assistant professor of apparel design in the U of M's College of Design, says that technology is a way to better solve problems we deal with in regular clothing design.

Today's winter coat, for instance, is designed to simply trap body heat. "By using technology," she says, "you can actually be generating heat … maybe only when the person is actually cold. So then we’d have a garment that’s a little more dynamic or responsive."

Dunne is focusing on embedding sensors to get information about movement or position or physiological states. "You can imagine embedding [a sensor] into a knee brace that might be able to tell you: 'This is too far.' Or it could just detect what’s going on with your knee all day long and then feed that information back to your doctor."

Clothing that expresses moods
Smart clothing has a fun side. "If fashion is a spectacle," Dunne says, "then we want to use technology to get attention or to make a statement. … Your outfit could change in some way to reflect your mood."

A skirt she designed had fiber optics that twinkled when the wearer laughed.

"We are only in the exploration stages of the expression realm," she says. "The potential for the future is great."

Tags: College of Design

Make your own Tron Bag!

2010-12-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

"Tote your Thinkpad and port your Apple in style with a custom TRON-inspired laptop bag tutorial. With a little soldering and sewing skills you can have your own light up satchel, sure to impress geeky friends." Go to http://ladyada.net/make/tronbag/ for a detailed tutorial by collaborators ladyada and Becky Stern on how to make your own el wire bag from an old laptop bag.

Less expensive battery holder for LilyPad Arduino

2010-12-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

From Leah: A cheaper battery holder option for LilyPad Arduino projects. Holds 2 3volt coin cell batteries. Won't last as long as the AAA or LiPo batteries, but a good option for smaller projects where space/cost is an issue...
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=1062K-ND

Skirt Full of Stars - Motion reactive skirt with fiber optics

2010-12-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

Imagine a skirt that sparkles with a rainbow of colors as you walk, dance, and twirl. The Skirt Full of Stars is an interactive, illuminated garment using the LilyPad Arduino platform, designed to respond to and accentuate the movements of its wearer.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Skirt-Full-of-Stars-Motion-reactive-skirt-with-f/

e-Textile Workshop Sells Out at the Record Breaking Grace Hopper Celebration 2010

2010-12-16T16:56:00.000-08:00

"The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced a record-breaking turnout of 2147 attendees representing 29 countries for the first day of the 10th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The world’s largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) is a five-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Themed “Collaborating Across Boundaries,” GHC is taking place in Atlanta, Georgia, September 28 – October 2, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta." (excerpt from press release http://gracehopper.org/2010/news/grace-hopper-celebration-of-women-in-computing-announces-record-breaking-turnout/

A conductive tape star is born!

While Grace Hopper was at an all time high for attendance, on September 30th e-textiles held a sold out workshop! We had 30 people sign up for the "e-Textiles the Softer Side of Computing" workshop, however a number of attendees didn't show, but we had an extremely excited group of women on a waiting list that dropped in early on the off chance they could sit in...but instead were able to participate in the hands on LilyPad circuit workshop!

Gotta love buttons!

The 30 attendees were treated to various materials when they entered the room, from a variety of cloth switches, pre made projects, book of conductive fabric and postcards with websites and ordering information that disappeared before the workshop even began...all of this was extremely exciting to many who were first timers. Just the thought of washable electronic elements sewed into clothing was mind boggling!

The panel and workshop was led by Ann-Marie Horcher from Nova Southeastern University, and myself which included a presentation on the importance of e-Textiles within the computing community ... then the fun began ... circuit building in a wide array of personal objects. The workshop ran smoothly with everyone helping out, talking about designs, how to complete the circuit in their project and everyone left with a working circuit. A fantastic workshop for a celebration of fascinating women!!

Yahoooo...it lit!!

Modkit Visits Bloomington!

2010-12-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

Modkit uses a Scratch like interface

Modkit is a web-based graphical programing environment for the LilyPad Arduino that allows you to drag and drop blocks of code to create programs for physical devices without worrying about making syntax errors. It uses an interface which was heavily inspired by Scratch and built using HTML5 web standards. Since the programming environment is internet based, all your work will be saved online, and available from any computer. The Modkit was designed to not only use the new simple LilyPad Arduino (for youth), but other arduino boards as well.


The immediate feedback was a huge hit!

Two days were used to plan and train a team from IU's Creativity Lab, who then started a 4 day workshop on October 25th at the Boys and Girls Club on the Modkit in the the club's computer lab. Each daily session lasted 2 hours and covered basic LilyPad programming like hooking up the LilyPad with alligator clips and programming blinking lights, musical notes in a speaker and the RGB sensor.

After playing with the Modkit for several days, the youth planned out the designs for their LilyPad projects. Projects included a series of LEDs in a hat that would light in a rotating manner, a backpack that would light and play music when the backpack was worn, a purse with blinking & solid lit LEDs, another purse with rotating LEDs on a flower design and another purse that used the temperature sensor to change the lights behavior.

Solid and Flashing LEDs!

Lit circuits always bring smiles but lit LilyPads seem to bring even bigger smiles! This recently finished black purse was our first LilyPad project to be completed with the Modkit. It contained three LEDs, two were programmed to be solid and one flashed a programmed pattern. The battery pack was purposefully hidden on the inside of the bag so only the LilyPad and LEDs were displayed on the outside.

Warm = Flashing LEDs

Cold = Solid LEDs

The peace sign jean purse took a different approach. The designer decided to display the battery holder yet hide the conductive thread stitches on the inside of the purse. The light behavior is designed to be a visual thermostat, controlled by an analog temperature sensor sewn to the LilyPad. The LilyPad was then programmed to flash the two LEDs when in warm conditions while the two LEDs will stay lit under cold temperatures.

Fall e-Textiles at the Boys and Girls Club

2010-12-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

This fall semester saw some new projects completed at the Boys and Girls Club in Bloomington due to a new group of club members. Every Monday and Wednesday the youth attended the e-Textile Club to work on projects. The biggest hit of the season were the Halloween buckets and bags! Youths first designed parallel circuits on paper, then using traditional LEDs to sew circuits using curled LEDs typically for the eyes. (Many are excellent LED curlers now : -)

Many youth made the bags for their own trick-or-treating candy collecting while another made a bag for his little sister to use...what a thoughtful big brother! It was discovered later that some were even used to pass out candy to neighborhood trick or treaters and were a huge hit!

After the influx of Halloween projects the youth were excited to have a variety of shaped beads brought in to play with. They quickly decided to make circuit bead necklaces, ankle and wrist bracelets. The bead projects could be completed in one day so they could make them for friends, teachers and relatives while still learning the basics of circuitry.

The semester also saw the return of the favorite circuit t-shirt like this one with a smiling Woodstock on it...always a hit! The designer carefully marked where she strategically wanted the LilyPad LEDs to be placed on Woodstock to highlight his eyes and smile. The semester ended too soon for the e-Textile club members...as they wanted the club to meet 5 days a week not just 2 : -)

Book: Sewing School: 21 sewing projects kids will love to make

2010-12-07T19:22:00.000-08:00

As we work with youth in elementary school, we're finding many don't have the basic sewing skills or knowledge about sewing, materials and procedures.

This is where the book Sewing School can help. It nicely lays out many sewing basics from beginning to end like tying a knot, to threading a needle, various stitches, materials, about sewing in groups, using patterns (and includes patterns) and showcases youth aged 6-13 through out the book.

Additionally, Sewing School shows a number of simple projects that could be made and are being made by youth. One of the strongest components of the book are the quotes from the youth, especially if youth will be looking through it for guidance...they'll see how much someone else enjoyed it and feel that they can also complete the project.

This is the look-inside link at amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sewing-School-Projects-Kids-Will/dp/1603425780#reader_1603425780

NSF Webcast Highlights E-Textiles and MIT's High-Low Tech Team

2010-12-07T18:48:00.000-08:00

Press Release 10-230
NSF Celebrates Computer Science Education Week 2010

NSF CELEBRATES COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION WEEK 2010
NSF-funded programs like GLITCH and E-Textiles make it cool to compute and may inspire the next Bill Gates

High-Low Tech research group seeks to engage diverse people in developing their own technologies.
Credit and Larger Version

December 7, 2010

View a webcast highlighting two NSF programs that engage students in computer science.

Imagine a jacket that lights up. With directional arrows programmed into the fabric, a bicyclist can use her jacket to alert traffic when she's turning. The jacket is an example of e-textiles, a techology that is drawing more girls to computer science through an innovative program at MIT. Meanwhile at Georgia Tech, high school students are hired to test and debug computer games, a way of bringing diverse students to computer science.

These inspired programs are unfortunately not typical. American information technology and software companies dominate the world marketplace, yet there is a gaping hole in formal computer science education. For K-12 students, computer science education is practically nonexistent. The United States lacks an adequate pipeline to feed world class computer science at the university level with the number and diversity of students needed to address societal challenges.

To recognize the critical role of computing and computer science education in the 21st century, Congress declared Dec. 5-11, 2010, as Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek).

In a Dec. 7 webcast, the National Science Foundation (NSF) highlighted two NSF-funded programs that aim to fill this gap and engage populations of students not typically drawn to computer science.

Amy Bruckman of Georgia Tech, along with Ph.D. candidate Betsy DiSilvo and former student James Bowland-Gleason, describes GLITCH, the Georgia Tech program that uses video games as a way for the high school students to "break open" the games and look at them as a piece of technology.

Leah Buechley and Emily Lovell of MIT's Media Lab report on their success at the forefront of teaching information technologies to the next generation of female computer scientists. They discuss how their High-Low Tech research group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives to engage diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. E-Textiles at MIT, for example, has captured the imagination and honed the computational skills of girls.

CSEdWeek representative Cameron Wilson of the Association for Computer Machinery provides perspective on why this week is important to his industry and to America's competitive edge. Other countries have stepped up their efforts with computer science education, and several countries, including Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Australia and some Asian countries have implemented a comprehensive computer science curriculum.

The notion that only future computer scientists or information technology (IT) professionals need training in computer science is no longer true. Outside of the IT industry, knowledge of computer science and computer programming is becoming a necessary skill for many professions, including those in science and technology, as well as careers in marketing, advertising, journalism and the creative arts.

-NSF-

For full posting see: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=118192&org=NSF&preview=false

Circuit Quilt Premiers at the Annual Boys & Girls Club Art Show

2010-12-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the opening of the annual BGC Art Show at the Bloomington City Hall. Over 50 pieces of art were shown and it was also the unvailing of the Circuit Quilt, which included 16 circuit quilt squares made by youth who attended the Creativity Labs summer workshop.

The quilt project was met with enthusiasm by everyone at the art show as they entered the front door. As parents, children and teachers interacted with the quilt, they were amazed that the squares lit up! Children wanted to make another one this summer, parents wanted their children in the current e-textile club and workshops and there was a real buzz about the combination of science and the arts!

Matisse, the BGC Art Director, and myself display the quilt

Additionally, there was a lot of excitement about the bracelets the e-textiles club is currently making at the BGC as well. Unfortunately, we are in the last week of the club before the holidays, but I have a feeling many will be requesting the return of the bracelet in the upcoming spring semester. Several mothers even commented to their child that they wanted one for themselves for the holidays! (See the LilyPond for instructions on the bracelets)

The quilt is still undergoing it's finishing touches: like embroidering on the green trim, and having the youth at the club add yarn ties to the square intersections. After a short display in our offices, the quilt will be presented to the club to hang an a wall where the children can easily press the push button switches to light up each circuit.

I wanted to add a special thanks to Kara, our lab assistant, who really came through in getting the quilt to this point so quickly for the art show. Also thanks to our summer workshop circuit team: Aviyona, Clay, Ethan, Gabriel, Griffin, Justin, Lennon, Luca, Makayla, Melisha, Phoebe, Rakia, Ron, Sage, Samari and Stephanie for making their first sewn circuits so beautifully!

Electronic Craft Bags

2010-11-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

Toting the myriad supply of needles, conductive thread, LEDs, alligator clips, and so on, then distributing it amongst kids' table and toting it back later can be a big pill to say the least. So we bought these bags thanks to a facebook ad that was actually relevant.

Here are scissors, Lilypads, alligator clips, fashion paint, velcro strips, a mini iron, USB drives, conductive thread, and tape all throw together in one bag. And what do we do with the LEDs?

Look at this delight! Six round trays with 6 snap down slots for stowing batteries LEDs. We simply plop two sets on each table and the kids have access to what they need. And it's relatively easy to clean up. We're *really* going to appreciate this when we start using the red, yellow, green, blue, and white LEDs in combo...

(Bags are by Creative Options and I think we ordered them through AC Moore.)

"Arts & Crafts" Materiality in (and out of) Digital Games

2010-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

This is from Sara Grime's blog -- please go there for videos etc. Sara also presented on this topic at the DIY Critical Citizenship conference in Toronto, November 2011

This week Nintendo released it's newest installment of the Kirby series, Kirby's Epic Yarn. What piqued my interest about the game is its use of arts & crafts as an aesthetic motif - everything looks like it's made of string, buttons, yarn and zippers. The aesthetic is supplemented by some clever looking game mechanics, which add to the sense of materiality and texture introduced by the game's environments and imagery. For instance, backgrounds contain loose threads that can be pulled, and things made of yarn (including Kirby himself) can change shape. I should add in a disclaimer at this point that this description is based on a cursory review of the demo videos (such as the one I've posted below) and early reviews - I haven't actually played it yet:

Of course, this immediately reminded me of LittleBigPlanet, which obviously also applies an "arts & crafts" aesthetic, albeit in a significantly (i.e. stylistically) distinct way. But as I thought about it a little more, I started to list all the other games I've come across that "play" with materiality, textiles and crafts, and realized that there is a small but notable genre emerging here. Nintendo itself has applied a similar "material" or "arts & crafts" aesthetic to a number of games in the past - most notably in the Paper Mario games, but also in the cardboard cut-out environments of Yoshi's Story:

Games like Crayon Physics, And Yet It Moves and Okami might also be included on this list, though more on the arts aspect than crafts. From Majesco, we now have Crafting Mama for the NDS. And there must be just about a million "girl games" or "pink games" that incorporate crafting to some degree - though I suspect this is predominantly in the form of mini-games, rather than on an aesthetic dimension. Searching for more examples, I came across this website for KNiiTTiiNG!!, a game that uses the Wii to simulate and teach knitting. Apparently, the game is still in Beta, but it got some media coverage last year (e.g. Kotaku), and is currently being featured as part of an art exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Again - not quite what I have in mind when I'm thinking of materiality and an "arts & crafts aesthetic" - but worth mentioning nonetheless.

All of which leads me back to the other side of this burgeoning relationship between arts & crafts, materiality and videogames, which manifests as physical objects, crafts, embroidery, etc., that reify (reproduce, remediate?) elements and characters from videogames. Aldo Tolino calls these "ludic artifacts": player-created objects that are inspired by video games, but created outside of the games themselves. Oftentimes, these objects aim to transport game themes or characters into the physical world, thereby extending the game experience into other areas of cultural experience & fan practice.

Gaming community members have long engaged in these practices, which include everything from knitting Metroid Prime dolls, to dressing up asPacman characters and running around the city, to baking the Portalcake (based on a recipe included in the game as an Easter Egg). For Tolino, one of the most important features of "ludic artifacts" is that they are quite often shared online - through pictures, videos, and other digital artifacts - with other members of the game community. There are also online communities that have formed around particular forms of "ludic artifact" production. An example of this is Sprite Stitch, a blog and forum dedicated to "videogame inspired crafts" and the people who make them. The forum community includes over 1200 knitters, embroiderers and other craftmakers who exchange pictures, patterns and advice about making videogame characters into tangible objects. One of the things that interests me most about these practices is how frequently they combine traditionally feminine (or do I mean feminized) craftwork with videogame fandom - baking, knitting, sewing, carpentry and metalworking. The transfer from digital to material and back to digital again (as the objects are photographed and filmed to be shared online) is simply fascinating.

More Examples:

Kirby Epic Yarn Plush on Instructables
LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Knit Pattern
AP's list of Video Game themed Crochet & Knit Patterns
Gaming's Non-Digital Predecessors, by Laurie N. Taylor and Cathlena Martin, University of Florida (International Digital Media & Arts Association Journal, v.1, no.3, SPring 2005, pp.25-9)

Amy Sedaris offers a how-to book with a wacky twist

2010-11-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

By Tirdad Derakhshani

Inquirer Staff Writer

Cross Martha Stewart and Groucho Marx, add a dash of Lenny Bruce and a heaping dose of LSD, and you get America's most maniacal domestic diva - Amy Sedaris, author of the magisterial how-to book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People.

Sedaris' 304-page tome, which she cowrote with Paul Dinello, is a copiously illustrated, funny, tongue-in-cheek idea book for making some of the most out-of-this-world, creepy - albeit cute - handmade home knickknacks in recent memory.

But she wasn't always known as the busy homemaker's patron saint.

A comedian, film star, author, and sister of humorist David Sedaris (a terrific career achievement), she is best known as the creator and star of Comedy Central's surreal comedy of ill manners, Strangers With Candy.

In 2006, she rocked and shocked the best-seller list with I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, a 304-page (whoa!), post-Martha Stewart guide to throwing the baddest (you know, that's baaad as in cool) parties.

Her crafting book, which she will discuss Friday night at the Free Library, includes such simple-to-make, affordable items as the "unable to make ends meet belt" (rolled plastic wrap); "poor man's toffee" (heated and futher-condensed condensed milk); "tampon ghosts" (just add wings); the Dropout Crab Claw Roach Clip (a roach clip stuck to the non-pincer side of a claw saved from dinner); and an entire series of "Crafting for Jesus" crafts, including Moses' Comb Holder, Jesus Sandals, a matchbook cross, and a clothespin Jesus.

Sara Grimes on: "Arts & Crafts" Materiality in (and out of) Digita...

2010-10-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Gamine Expedition: "Arts & Crafts" Materiality in (and out of) Digita...: "©2010 Nintendo, Inc., Kirby Epic Yarn promo materials This week Nintendo released it's newest installment of the Kirby series, Kirby's Ep..."

Cute, Conductive Elephants

2010-10-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

Here in Philly we've discovered a neat group of people called "TechGirlz" who are running educational activities for girls involving - you guessed it - circuits, sewing, and creativity. Here's one of the projects for a workshop coming up at NextFab Studios near University of Pennsylvania campus.

"Our project will be crafting two elephants, a parent and baby. When their trunks are intertwined the baby elephant’s “heart” lights up."

Cute and clever conductivity!!!

http://techgirlz.org/events/

CLO Workshop at Wharton School of Business

2010-09-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

In mid-September the team at University of Pennsylvania led a workshop for CLOs (chief learning officers) where they sewed several lights on a pre-programmed Lilypad. Our goal was for them to have a hat with blinking lights by the end of the 2.5 hour workshop, expose them to ways to change the programming, and have them reflect on their learning. Nothing like being taken out of your comfort zone with sewing, making circuits, and learning basic programming to reflect on one’s learning!

In a massive sewing morning, we pre-sewed swatches with power supplies and switches connected to a Lilypad. We shall not divulge how often we poked ourselves in the process.) There were 29 participants - Below was the result with all of our lovely sewing lined up neatly.

The participants then worked to sew on up to five lights. They were so excited about creating their projects that they refused to go on their break and some tables started competing with each other to see who could get the most lights sewn on to their Lilypad.

Once swatches were finished the participants velcro’d them to black hats (the hats were too thick to sew the components on directly) and some folks added some decorations to spark them up.

We also showed them how they could re-program order, pace, and number of blinks without changing any of the sewing - the project that keeps on giving. :)

Thoughts on Textiles

2010-09-24T15:11:00.001-07:00

Textiles embody the creative vision of cultures that produced them.
- Gerhardt Knodel

School for Hackers -- The Atlantic October 2010

2010-09-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

The do-it-yourself movement revives learning by doing.

By MARK FRAUENFELDER

IMAGE CREDIT: KIMBERLY WRIGHT/REUTERS/CORBIS

IMAGINE A SCHOOL where kids could do the following: clone jellyfish DNA; build gadgets to measure the electrical impulses of cockroach neurons; make robotic blackjack dealers; design machines that can distinguish between glass, plastic, and aluminum beverage containers and sort them into separate bins; and convert gasoline-burning cars to run on electric power.

No such school exists, but in August I went to Detroit and met the kids who did all these things, and more. They—along with 22,000 other people—had come from all over the United States and Canada to demo their creations at Maker Faire, a two-day festival of do-it-yourselfers, crafters, musicians, urban homesteaders, kit makers, scientists, engineers, and curious visitors who congregated to present projects, give performances, and swap ideas. Having attended eight Maker Faire events since 2006 (they’re put on by the same company that owns the magazine I edit), I’ve become convinced of two things about children and education: (1) making things is a terrific way to learn, and (2) schools are failing to teach kids to learn with their hands

The ideal educational environment for kids, observes Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College who studies the way children learn, is one that includes “the opportunity to mess around with objects of all sorts, and to try to build things.” Countless experiments have shown that young children are far more interested in objects they can control than in those they cannot control—a behavioral tendency that persists. In her review of research on project-based learning (a hands-on, experience-based approach to education), Diane McGrath, former editor of the Journal of Computer Science Education, reports that project-based students do as well as (and sometimes better than) traditionally educated students on standardized tests, and that they “learn research skills, understand the subject matter at a deeper level than do their traditional counterparts, and are more deeply engaged in their work.” In The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely, a behavioral psychologist at Duke University, recounts his experiments with students about DIY’s effect on well-being and concludes that creating more of the things we use in daily life measurably increases our “feelings of pride and ownership.” In the long run, it also changes for the better our patterns of thinking and learning.

Unfortunately, says Gray, our schools don’t teach kids how to make things, but instead train them to become scholars, “in the narrowest sense of the word, meaning someone who spends their time reading and writing. Of course, most people are not scholars. We survive by doing things.”

So it makes sense that members of the DIY movement see education itself as a field that’s ripe for hands-on improvement. Instead of taking on the dull job of petitioning schools to change their obstinate ways, DIYers are building their own versions of schools, in the form of summer camps, workshops, clubs, and Web sites. Tinkering School in Northern California helps kids build go-karts, watchtowers, and hang gliders (that the kids fly in). Competitions like FIRST Robotics (founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen) bring children and engineers together to design and build sophisticated robotics. “Unschooler” parents are letting their kids design their own curricula. Hacker spaces like NYC Resistor in Brooklyn and Crash Space in Los Angeles offer shop tools and workshops for making anything from iPad cases to jet packs. Kids in the Young Makers Program (just launched by Maker Media, Disney-Pixar, the Exploratorium, and TechShop) have built a seven-foot animatronic fire-breathing dragon, a stop-motion camera rig, a tool to lift roofing supplies, and new skateboard hardware.

When a kid builds a model rocket, or a kite, or a birdhouse, she not only picks up math, physics, and chemistry along the way, she also develops her creativity, resourcefulness, planning abilities, curiosity, and engagement with the world around her. But since these things can’t be measured on a standardized test, schools no longer focus on them. As our public educational institutions continue down this grim road, they’ll lose value as places of learning. That may seem like a shame, but to the members of the growing DIY schooling movement, it’s an irresistible opportunity to roll up their sleeves.

A Return to Basics, One Stitch at a Time -- NYTimes

2010-08-21T14:52:00.001-07:00

By KATE SINGLETON

Published: August 9, 2010

FLORENCE — When Sara Checcucci opened her atelier in Galluzzo, a southern district of Florence bordering the Chianti hillsides, she was astonished by the number of young people who would stop to gaze at her through the window as she worked. Later some of them came in and asked her to teach them her skills. So she arranged a series of evening courses, and was even more surprised when her pupils included young men.

Ms. Checcucci is a tailor who hand-sews 90 percent of the garments she makes. “Cut is everything,” she said, leaning over the cutting out table in her atelier, her scissors poised above a length of cloth mapped with chalk guidelines. “It means knowing how to design the paper model from which the cloth will be cut, and this implies the ability to measure a person not only as regards size, but also stance. The jacket I make for a straight-backed man will not be the same as the one for a person of the same size with sloping shoulders. Only once the cut is perfect can the needle work begin.”

Brought up just outside Florence, Ms. Checcucci knew at an early age that her future would revolve around scissors, needles and thread. She opted for a high school with a specialization in fashion, though this involved five years of rising before dawn and changing buses twice to get there. Next came a degree course at the Polimoda fashion institute in Florence, where she found she was one of the few students eager to focus on the sartorial arts rather than fashion; cut and needlework rather than look.

“I then found a job where I was responsible for a whole collection of clothes every season,” she recalled. “It was hard work, interesting and gratifying. After three years I had saved enough to take time out. I wanted to go back to technique.”

After much searching, Ms. Checcucci found an elderly tailor who agreed to take her on as an unpaid disciple. “He taught me everything I know about detail, and it’s the details that make the difference,” she said “When he retired I felt confident enough to go it alone. In 2008 I found the right space in Galluzzo and opened the Sartoria Corti Montecchi named after my mother and grandmother. That’s when I discovered there are young people anxious to learn the art of fine tailoring.

“The boys are fewer in number, but especially motivated,” she went on. “It’s as though a generation brought up on mass produced garments is suddenly beginning to realize that there’s more to dressing than passively buying clothes off the peg.”

Ms. Checcucci makes clothes to order for men and women from the best Italian fabrics, and re-models existing attire. Three fittings are generally required for a man’s jacket, which takes about a month to make and costs €950, about $1,300, plus the price of the fabric. A woman’s sleeveless dress costs €150 plus fabric and requires one fitting and two weeks for delivery.

One of Ms. Checcucci’s hallmarks is to enhance the individuality of the garment with a little unorthodox detail: the addition to women’s wear of a feature typical of men’s tailoring, for instance, such as a particular stitch or a style of pocket. Attention to such minutiae, along with the principles of hand sewing and creating paper models, is what she hopes to impart to her students in a new series of evening courses she will be running at her atelier from mid-September. Designed for groups of five, the classes consist of five two-hour lessons costing a total of €250.

While it may be too early to call the growing demand for sewing lessons a widespread trend, there are certainly signs of a revival of interest in various forms of needlework in Italy. A telling case is to be found in Milan.

Barbara Zucchi Frua earned a degree in pedagogy before joining the family firm of Zucchi, manufacturers of household linens, located just north of the city. Throughout her 18 years with the company as head of human resources, she sought to expand the workshop experience, where employees, especially those involved in design, were encouraged to look at products from new perspectives, to expand their own horizons.

In the wider world, however, Ms. Zucchi Frua became increasingly aware that people were losing their contact with textiles because they had given up the small skills that provide know-how. She had a spacious ground-floor room in the fashionable canal area of Milan and decided to make something out of it. “What I had in mind was a nexus for exchange to do with fabrics, colors, yarns and sewing,” she said, surrounded by bolts of fabric and a battery of sewing machines in her luminous new workshop.

L’Hub opened in 2009, first with the idea of selling individual, hand-made textile products that people could learn to make on the spot. But the focus was not quite what Ms. Zucchi Frua wanted. “Too much of a shop,” she said, “and too expensive.” What she needed to sell was know-how at reasonable prices.

“When I was reworking the project, a woman came in, looked around and introduced herself. This was Rosanna Pagliarini, who had plenty of hands-on experience with clothes manufacturing and shared many of my ideas about the loss of simple skills. Rosanna came on board as artistic director. She is extraordinarily inventive, making wonderful garments from unusual cloths and producing kits to show others how it’s done.”

With Ms. Pagliarini’s input, L’Hub was soon ready to offer a basic six-hour sewing course using electric machines and a series of kits for making clothes, for €100 a participant. There are also four-hour courses for dyeing, printing and knitting at €50. The center now runs an average of four courses a week for groups with a minimum of five members.

“We’re not a do-it-yourself outfit, though,” Ms. Zucchi Frua hastened to add. “There’s too much ugly D.I.Y. stuff around. What we’re bringing together is a certain look, which the kits express, and the opportunity to learn and experiment. We encourage creativity, which often involves giving new life to old fabrics. We also have a huge collection of engraved wooden blocks used for printing, so we’re an important resource for design students. Another project I hope to get off the ground concerns helping disadvantaged women by giving them skills they can use to support themselves.”

Inquiries have started coming in from other cities — from Trieste to Florence to Palermo. So while Ms. Pagliarini draws up designs for turning linen tablecloths into dresses, Ms. Zucchi Frua is busy working out a format for a L’Hub franchise
.

On You 2 @ Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA)

2010-08-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

Georgia Tech has an exhibit that is unfortunately nearing it's end date (June 11-August 14) that looks specifically at conductive thread embroidery and fabric manipulation interfaces. How are these designs different, from some of the previous conductive thread interfaces we've seen? The answer is the context. These were designed with high end fashions in mind (e.g. the dress worn at a social event to dim the atmospheric lighting and music volume, or the pants with the conductive thread hidden embroidery sewn into the pleats). To view the YouTube video go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4nQ41SwCoE&feature=player_embedded#!

e-Textiles @ the Boys and Girls Club - The Finale

2010-08-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Slide of the LilyPad POV

The second week at the club (June 14-18) started with the next level of circuitry…using multiple LEDs! But first we administered the second part of the sticker pretest (the backside) then we let the youth play with alligator clips and the parts in constructing the series/parallel circuits they just designed on their pretest. After the hands on play Ben and Alex presented a brief lesson on electricity then the two groups watched a Bill Nye The Science Guy episode on electricity to reinforce many of the principles just discussed. The youth were asked if they wanted to make the POV band or the interactive glove…the POV was chosen!

Finished POV Band

With an understanding of multiple LEDs and an introduction to the LilyPad Arduino, Ben proceeded onto their next project, the POV wrist band. You can see Ben’s first version using 7 LilyPad LEDs on YouTube at http://www.instructables.com/id/LilyPad-Wrist-Band-POV/. (Note: the youth version, used because of a smaller wrist diameter, only uses 5 LEDs and still maintains a visual display.) As Ben wrote in his posting “Persistence of Vision (POV) is the illusion that an image continues to persist even though the image has changed. In essence, we are taking advantage of the limitations of the brain-eye processing time.”

In addition, due to the Arduino based programming of the LilyPad, a program was written so the youth wouldn’t have to write code. They would only select a 3-5 letter word/name to display, then Alex and/or Ben would program the microprocessor. The result is when the band is waved in a darkened space their word choice would display.

Mid construction with stickers

The steps for constructing the POV for the youth followed the same pattern:
1)    Use stickers (Lilypad, battery holder, 5 LEDs) to draw the diagram in their journal and have it checked off on.
2)    Select a piece of fleece fabric of their color choice, secure it in the hoop, and place stickers on the fabric to reflect the journal diagram.
3)    Visit the check station and obtain the LilyPad and battery holder to sew the + and – battery connections first.
4)    After the battery connection is tested each LED is obtained at their table.

Programming Station

After completing the conductive thread sewing and the project was checked, the youth visited the sewing machine station. There the LilyPad elements on the fleece were trimmed to a rectangle size and machine stitched to a 3” wide black elastic band already stitched with Velcro strips for easy fitting.

2 Superheros in the making

The next and last stop was the programming and photography station where the LilyPad Arduino was then programmed with their word/name choice and a photo was taken of the LED display and youth with their superhero like wrist band.

One common mistake we found was the over generous application of the nail polish to secure the knots. We found if the knots were on the backside of the material there is less chance the LilyPad holes would be varnished with nail polish (which could block a secure connection to the conductive thread)

One of the post tests

We also noted that the multiple LED discussions, hands on time, 2nd half of pretest and post tests (same as the pretest with an added more traditional working/not working choice test…see pic) and POV build took approximately 4 days (2 hours/day) to complete, depending on the attendance & persistence of the youth.

Last day preparations

The workshop ended with an open house and pizza party the last hour on Friday, June 18th for all parents, siblings and other club members to attend. Some youth were working up till the last minute to finish their projects to display. They proudly wore and laid out their nonwearable projects they constructed during the past 2 weeks. Kylie welcomed the parents and explained what their children had been part of for the past two weeks, then the workshop youth were able to show off all of their accomplishments to everyone. When the other club members visited the room they were extremely excited about the completed projects and wanted to join in next time…to which we replied…”sign up time will be in the fall!”

Wearables & projects ready for the show!

e-Textiles @ the Boys and Girls Club - Part III

2010-08-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

Does shiny mean conductivity?

The third project or t-shirt phase, started on Thursday, June 10th by exploring connectivity with alligator clips and sewable parts. After some hands-on time of playing with the sewable parts and alligator clips I led a brief introduction to handmade switches (already designed in pillows, t-shirts, bracelets) so these could be incorporated into their t-shirt designs if wanted. Then the conductivity kits were passed out, containing a variety of materials (some resistant and some not) allowing the groups of youth to use the multimeters to test each material.

"Is it conductive?"...the game!

Charlene quizzes a player

While the youth were playing with the multimeters, t-shirts were laid out on several tables (mostly a boys table and a girls table-due to the girls being more of a form fitting style of t-shirt). After the conductivity hands-on group play, a conductivity game, led by Charlene and Ben, was played to informally test their knowledge (also this let the winners pick which t-shirt they wanted to sew a circuit on in an orderly fashion). The game was a huge hit! One of the participants tested the conductive materials with a multimeter and if the material was conductive or not. Hands were waved to be picked, the youth intently listened as others answered questions and clapped when the right answer was given. T-shirts were grabbed up, tried on/modeled and the enthusiasm ensued.

Youth design circuit in journal

After the youth took their seats they started to draw out their t-shirt circuit in their journal using the three stickers (LED, switch & battery holder). We all milled around answering questions and checking off each design in the journals. Once the design was checked off the youth placed stickers on the shirts in the appropriate places.

An original shirt design!

To aid in the sewing of the t-shirts (and to ensure that the youth wouldn’t sew the front and back of the t-shirt together) we again used 10” embroidery hoops to separate and stretch the material flat. For most youth the average sewing time took 1-2 hours to complete, unless additional designs or homemade switches were added to the shirts.

Ben at the switch check station

We found one way to ensure that the proper connects were sewn was having a check station midway through, where the stitching connectivity could be checked and a new part handed out. This was a good place to remind the youth of the proper stitches length, parts placement, to secure each part with two loops through the hole, secure the knots with nail polish and to double check their drawing to the shirt sewing.

A lit rock star

Calling Captain Kirk...

As soon as the youth completed their shirt and the circuit successfully lit, the shirt was usually worn for the rest of the days workshop. However, the t-shirts were collected at the end of each day (as were the rest of the projects) and stored in their folder till the final day of the workshop when we were planning an open house.

Now onto our fourth and last project…the POV band, a highly anticipated project at the club, that looks like it belongs on a superhero!

e-Textiles @ the Boys and Girls Club - Part II

2010-08-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

Finished Sewing Sheet

Thread pulls down through the needle top

The second project phase: sewing circuits started at the Boys and Girls Club on Tuesday June 8th. To familiarize the youth with sewing we opted to sew into construction paper (an already comfortable material) copied with three object patterns. The youth picked one of three running stitching sheets (rocket, robot chick, bug) to sew using regular thread and a Clover self-threading needle. All of the youth practiced threading their needle then sewed stitching sheets (some stitched 2 or even 3 of the sheets!)

After practicing the running stitch, Ben and Alex gave a short talk on circuits & shorts by using a few slides and ending on the sewing circuit complete with the sewable parts. Kylie stressed the importance of stopping at the knots at each part and not sewing through the parts and asked the group what would happen if you did sew all the way through a part? They responded: "A SHORT!"

Decorated Journal Cover

Next each youth picked out a colored journal, a set of stickers and drew a working circuit in their journal to use as a point of reference. Each journal was checked for accuracy and the youth then started on their first sewn circuit!

Using a set of stickers (LED, switch, Battery holder) each youth laid out their circuit on their chosen colored quilting square. Replacing the sticker with the part and using conductive thread they sewed from:
1) the + on the battery holder to the + on the LED; knotted and cut the thread.
2) the – on the LED to the switch; knotted and cut the thread.
3) the switch to the – on the battery holder; knotted and cut the thread.
Then the magical moment of inserting the 3V battery resulted:

a working circuit and smiles!!

Note: The youth's squares are currently being sewn into a quilt to be displayed on a wall at the Bloomington Boys and Girls Club. Picture is forthcoming.

e-Textiles at the Bloomington B&G Club - Part 1

2010-08-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Purple crane with purple LEDs!

On Monday, June 7th, IU’s CT team: Kylie, Ben, Alex, Charlene, and myself (with Erin on cameras) started a two week e-textile implementation at the Boys and Girls Club in Bloomington, IN. The objective was to present and then evaluate a full range of newly designed activities & materials to 20 youth ranging from 7-12 years of age, from pre to post tests, journals, introductional presentations and tutorials on various e-textiles projects including paper & textile circuits as well as designing circuits, several presentations and hands-on activities with circuitry, electricity and conductivity and ending with the construction of a LilyPad project. Not knowing how the youth would react to several activities, we tended to have additional activities in our grab bag than needed, so we could easily replace it at a moments notice (e.g. homemade switches, pillow projects, glove project).

Working Circuit stickers with + and - added

Kylie started with a brief overview for the workshop, then Diane presented a few slides & video clips to open a discussion about e-textiles in general and to illustrate what could be designed using this emerging technology and textiles. We then jumped into a sticker pre-test (see sticker picture of the working circuit parts) to see what their pre-existing knowledge of various types of circuitry was. (e.g. working, parallel, series, broken) We opted for the youth to design their own circuits using stickers and pencils, instead of a traditional science classroom circuit test, for several reasons: 1) Stickers are fun! (and we supplied decorated kid mechanical pencils too) 2) Some youth are intimidated by anything science-like and/or looking like a test (especially in an after-school environment) 3) The placement of the stickers (e.g. battery + or - to LED + or - ) is revealing about their previous circuitry knowledge. 4) The connections drawn between parts (with pencils, where the conductive thread will be sewn) will also help expose their understanding of a complete circuit (e.g. forming a loop).

Focusing at the crane table

Next Ben and Alex took the floor with their Paper Airplane and Paper Crane tutorials in hand. The youth chose between the two paper and conductive tape projects and split up accordingly and we passed out the kits (e.g. precut conductive tape strips, 2 traditional LEDs, large paper clip). Each crane project youth chose what color/pattern of paper they wanted for their crane, while the airplanes used copy paper.

Finished plane!

We found while the paper airplane took a shorter time to construct than the folding of the origami crane, the taping took longer on the paper airplane than the crane…so in the end the two projects were similar in total length.

Check back for parts 2-4 at the club!

*A special thanks to Leah Buechley for sending us LilyPad sticker sheets which inspired us to design our circuit sticker sheets!

e-Textiles at The Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp Part II

2010-08-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Setting for the e-textile circuit at IU

The second part of the circuit workshop (e-textile) at the summer camp was inclusive of all attendees and took place from 6:30 till 9pm on July 21st. Due to the logistics and the number of attendees (all 60-70) the location was moved to a computer lab. Additionally, due to the number of attendees our staff grew to include Kylie, Charlene, Ben and myself, with Erin assisting on the cameras.

Bug Stitching Sheet

The session started with the attendees sewing (with regular thread) a running stitch sheet, designed by our own Charlene. (The 3 sheet sewing sheet series can be downloaded at the Boys & Girls Club blog) This helped the attendees become familiar on how to thread the Clover self-threading needles and aided them in understanding the running stitch we would be using with the conductive thread in the next circut project.

Then the fun began! A brief introduction to circuitry followed including circuits, shorts and switches. (see the attached HSCCircuit.pdf file for the slides presented. Note a number of slides are from Leah Buechley's presentation, which she generously passed on for us to use.)

After introducing the parts in their kits (e.g. LilyPad LED, push button switch, battery holder and 3V coin cell battery) we repeatedly stressed the importance of sewing through the part holes 2x’s (for connectivity and to secure the parts to the fabric), where to start (with a knot) and where to knot and cut off. However, as much as we attempted to stress the looping 2x’s, knotting and cutting we still encountered a few circuits sewn in a continuous loop, or a parts’ + and – terminals connected with one continuous sewn piece of conductive thread.

Diane & Charlene point out START & STOP points

To highlight the importance of the stop and start sewing points on the circuit, Charlene added post-it notes to the projected slide on the wall. One camp leader confessed he was rushing to complete the circuit and stitched all the way around in one solid running stitch…a common mistake : -) (FYI This attached set of slides has been sent back for clarification…see the SPIRIT blog post for the latest slide update.)


Helping out a friend

But, all in all, the vast majority of attendees finished their circuit within the allotted time. After finishing their circuit many had time to assist their friends in finishing their circuit as well.

For the attendees, the moment of satisfaction seemed to come when they first pushed the button switch and the LED lit. One girl even had me push the button on her circuit after we troubleshot it…but her face still showed the excitement of her first completed sewn circuit!

*A special thanks to Kalani Craig for the use of her “running stitch” jpg file on the stitching sheets.

Circuitology at Harris Science Camp @ IU

2010-08-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

IU's Paper Airplane building lab

Okay, so circuitology isn't a recognized word, at least not yet (is it?), but this was the topic of discussion (including e-textiles) for two days at the The ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp (EMBHSSC) at Indiana University in Bloomington on July 19th & 21st. The free two-week residential summer camp takes place at over 30 selected universities across the US every year emphasizing increasing underrepresented middle school students mathematics and science skills while introducing them to college life and stimulating their interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as potential career paths. IU hosted from 60-70 campers and camp leaders during the program.

Ben leading the Airplane workshop

IU's CT programming team, Ben and Alex, led the first three 90 minute sessions on July 19th. Each group of attendees were given an intro to circuits then built the paper airplane tutorial Ben designed (see the blog on the Boys and Girls Club implementation to download Ben's Airplane tutorial).

Building the plane

The project is low cost (1 piece of printed paper, 2 (non LilyPad) LEDs, cut strips of conductive tape, one 3V battery, large paperclip), simple and the youth can fly the airplane with lights glowing at the end of the session.


The focus is on bending LEDs

The flight!!

Purdue SPIRIT Camp 7/26/10

2010-07-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday our 3 person team (Ben, Charlene & myself) led circuit workshops for the high school attendees of the SPIRIT Project at Purdue in Lafayette, IN (http://www.ITPossibilities.org) "The goal of SPIRIT can be found in its full name -- Surprising Possibilities Imagined and Realized through Information Technology (IT). The SPIRIT project celebrates the immense impact that information technology has on our world and seeks to rekindle enthusiasm for the field as a career choice among high school students, especially young women". The room we were assigned was a high tech conference room with rows of tables with comfy roller chairs on only one side. The seating next to one another was important for the sharing of information and techniques.

We led four one hour sessions (30-40 youth, counselors in each session). Each session covered a quick intro to e-textiles, showing of a few physical examples of circuit projects (pillows, t-shirt, bag) then Ben explained his POV band. We briefly discussed the LilyPad Arduino and the variety of sensors in the Lilypad kit then jumped into the circuit kits (3V battery, battery holder, LilyPad LED, push button switch, needle, conductive thread & small material swatches).

Even though this series was the quickest of our recent workshops the circuit projects were the most varied. Part of the reason was the access to a large supply of puffy paints. Secondly, we added a few design slides in our presentation suggesting various loop shapes, initials or thinking about using their favorite SillyBanz shape. Third, the older group was thinking of how they could hide certain elements (e.g. battery holder, switch). This seemed to add to the project interest and personalization of their quick circuit.

SmartFashion in Bremen

2010-07-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

In June, I visited Heidi Schelhowe's dimeb group at the Universitaet Bremen. A group of fashion design students came for two days to work with the EduWear Kit and create intelligent fashion. See one of the design above.

Visit to Grace Ngai eToyLab

2010-07-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

Just two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Grace Ngai at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and stop by at her eToy Lab where she is developing the i*CATch tooolkit, the next incarnation of the Tboard. Check out the cool jacket that Grace has produced in China with snaps -- no needles and threads needed anymore just snaps!

Smart clothes offer emotional aid

2010-06-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

Smart clothes could soon be helping their wearers cope with the stresses of modern life.

The prototype garments monitor physiological states including temperature and heart rate.

The clothes are connected to a database that analyses the data to work out a person's emotional state.

Media, including songs, words and images, are then piped to the display and speakers in the clothes to calm a wearer or offer support.

Created as part of an artistic project called Wearable Absence the clothes are made from textiles woven with different sorts of wireless sensors. These can track a wide variety of tell-tale biological markers including temperature, heart rate, breathing and galvanic skin response.

For more, read here.

Up Next! Workshops at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Bloomington June 7th-18th

2010-06-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

Starting this week, over 30 youth will join us for their first introduction to computational textiles in a series of IU workshops at the Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington. We'll be meeting everyday from 3:30-5:30 from June 7th through June 18th. Lots of fun new projects on the horizon including paper airplanes, origami, letter pillows, t-shirts, interactive gloves, and POV wristbands embedded with simple circuits and LilyPad materials. Coming soon are new tutorials and instructables featuring new project ideas for kids! For more information contact Kylie Peppler at kpeppler@indiana.edu.

New DIY Article on Huffington Post

2010-06-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Check out this brief article by Mark Frauenfelder, editor of Make magazine, on the merits of doing-it-yourself:

Apparently, he has a new book entitled Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, which focuses on the DIY ethic but also addresses working with both hand and mind.

Cute Circuit Dress Wows The Met Ball

2010-05-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

Singer Katy Perry wore a Cute Circuit designed dress to the Costume Institute Gala Benefit celebrating the opening of the "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 3, 2010 in New York City.

The designers use the smallest full-color LEDs available. These are flat like paper and measure only 2mm in length. (The same as CC's Galaxy Dress on display in Chicago) The circuits are extra-thin and flexible and hand-embroidered on to a layer of silk to allow them to stretch. The LED bulbs consume only a small amount of electricity, and are powered by a number of small iPod batteries inside the skirt, with no danger of overheating. The dress reportedly faded at about 12:30am, at an afterparty, when Katy tweeted: "My lights went out. Parties Ovah." http://www.couturesnob.com/2010/05/katy-perry-in-cutecircuit-dress-at-met-gala.html

The controls for Katy's dress were tucked inside her bra. For a video demo of the dresses on/off switch see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/04/katy-perry-met-costume-in_n_562747.html

To read the full article go to:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1271640/Met-Costume-Institute-Gala-Katy-Perry.html

SparkL Motion - Accelerometer Necklace

2010-04-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Created by Jennifer Savage, a member of Alpha One Labs

From her post: SparkL Motion is a simple ribbon necklace (she used using pulse width modulation to make LEDs “sparkle”) The LilyPad Arduino is front and center, worn like a Cameo, with a strand of LEDs coming out from either side of it. The electricity is run through conductive thread, so there are no wires that could poke the wearer. The top of the ribbon itself is crimped in place using beads, so that the ribbon falls along the edge of the neckline. This crimping also creates a soft ruffle and helps to distribute the weight of the LilyPad so that it doesn’t tilt forward. Additionally, both a battery source (3V Coin Cell) and an accelerometer are hidden behind the LilyPad itself.

Step by step instructions, code and stitching suggestions are posted at: http://www.alphaonelabs.com/sparkl-motion/

Bringing History Alive via the LilyPad

2010-04-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

Dana Johnson, an M.A. student in Public History at the University of Western Ontario, created an interactive historical exhibit, using a real story (Harry Hansell b. 1923), miltary jacket, old letters, images on a computer screen and the LilyPad Arduino and LEDs. Below are a few project photos, however you can read about the entire creation process (including code) and design journey on her blog at: http://sites.google.com/site/interactiveexhibitetextiles/home

The LilyPad & battery were sewn on the left hip of the jacket

Each of the 4 pockets have an LED that lights when it's time to reach in the pocket.

Excerpt from one of the 4 letters reproduced from the archives of
Harry Ernst Hansell, a Royal Canadian Air Force serviceman.
This letter be found in one of the four jacket pockets.

View the project video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0gdvsqLPiE

With 'Ping' clothing, status updates literally tap you on the shoulder

2010-04-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

An e-mail counting t-shirt

2010-04-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

Chris Ball and Madeleine made a t-shirt together that displays how much unread e-mail I have using an Arduino Lilypad and Bluetooth dongle, and an Android phone to send the number of unread mails to the shirt.

Brilliant! See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X-hPEZWWo8
His blog page can be viewed at http://blog.printf.net/articles/2010/03/30/email-counting-tshirt
Link to his code: http://github.com/cjb/lilypad-email-shirt#readme

Flying Diamonds

2010-04-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Arduino art show curated by Alicia Gibb, March 27 2010 @ NYC Resistor
Flying Diamonds Cotton and conductive threads and electronics components including a LilyPad Arduino on vinyl 2010 by Becky Stern.
Posted on Flickr

Computational Textiles as Materials for Creativity

FiberPhiladelphia

FiberPhiladelphiaMarch - April 2012

Outstanding needlework by girls of Chester County

Texting Glove for the hearing impaired

A Master of Embroidery Remembered

By SUZY MENKES

Published: December 12, 2011

Multimedia

More than just digital quilting

Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution.

Chinese hackerspaces, or, what happens when a government is run by engineers

Visit to the Textile Museum at the Bank of Thailand

Faraday Curtain by Loop.pH

Upcoming Voodoo Doll Workshop with Catarina Mota on December 1st at Indiana University!

Costura

Not All Arduino Uses are Created Equal: Context & Gender

The Making of Arduino: How five friends engineered a small circuit board that’s taking the DIY world by storm

Techy way to spice up that costume for Halloween!

Wi-Fi haptic ‘Le-Chal’ shoes to guide the blind navigate city streets now

Wired Textiles for a Phone as Useful as the Shirt on Your Back

LilyPad Arduino Brooch!

Makeshift Magazine

Makers of the world

Electronics for everyone

What is Teagueduino?

Make

Learn

Teach

Technical Details

Interactive T-shirts by Think Geek!

Leaf Planetarium Lets You Watch The Stars From Bed

At This Girls’ Camp, Crafts Take a Drill Press

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: August 18, 2011 New York Times

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

Though the slim, 5-foot-5 teenager dreams of becoming a basketball star, Nautika now has a backup plan after her weeklong immersion course: a career in manufacturing.

Lights out: Ump halts game, instructs fans to dim their clothing

Idle Pastime: In Off Hours, Truckers Pick Up Stitching

With Less to Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies; Quilting in the Cab By JENNIFER LEVITZ

With Less to Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies; Quilting in the Cab

Barbie Girl Video

Deja Vu Intelligent Purse: A purse that remembers when you can't

Made of Paper, Microsoft’s “Printing Dress” Displays Tweets as Public Art

New ProtoSnap - LilyPad E-Sewing Kits!

Back to the Simple Life, With Needle and Thread

By LIZ ROBBINS

Published: August 5, 2011

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Yarnana -- A Love Story

Personal fabrication

You’re Never Too Old to Learn Shoemaking

By AMANDA PETRUSICH

Published: May 12, 2011

Squishy Circuits

LilyPad design lights up the runway

Textile Messages Symposium

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

A Career Woven from Life in NYT

Textiles & Felt Workshop at the Penn Museum

WIRED 19.4 How to make stuff

Textile Messages Symposium April 22 in Philadelphia

TEI2011: Calling all Superheros to the Design Challenge

If only Dorothy & Toto had this Find Home Detector....

LilyPad Arduino Wireless Dance Costume Performance @ Indiana University

Philadelphia Schools explore the learning connection between Making & Writing

Sparkfun's 2 Day E-Textile Workshop this weekend!

Fun in the snow!

Arduino the documentary

Smart Clothing

http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2010/UR_CONTENT_212784.html

Smart clothing

Make your own Tron Bag!

Less expensive battery holder for LilyPad Arduino

Skirt Full of Stars - Motion reactive skirt with fiber optics

e-Textile Workshop Sells Out at the Record Breaking Grace Hopper Celebration 2010

Modkit Visits Bloomington!

Fall e-Textiles at the Boys and Girls Club

Book: Sewing School: 21 sewing projects kids will love to make

FiberPhiladelphia
March - April 2012

With Less to Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies; Quilting in the Cab

By JENNIFER LEVITZ