The Creativity Labs have been busy with e-textiles again
this month! On June 6, members of the lab conducted an e-bracelet workshop with
several girls at the Monroe County Public Library. This program was part of
MCPL’s Maker Days, which will occur throughout the summer.
The girls at our E-Fashion Design program created an
e-textile bracelet out of felt, conductive thread, a 3V coin cell battery, and
a single LilyPad LED. We had the girls diagram on paper the circuit they would
put on their bracelet before they began sewing, and we found that this greatly
facilitated the process, giving them more time to decorate their bracelets.
Which they did to tremendous effect! Take a look at these beautiful designs:
Dr. Kylie Peppler facilitated the workshop, with help
from her advisees Sophia, Verily, and Kate (who graciously photographed the
event). Thanks to Sarah Bowman from MCPL, without whom the event could not have
happened.
The next week, from June 11-12, Diane, Sophia, and Verily
facilitated a 2-day e-textile workshop for Teen Program Coordinators from
throughout the Chicago Public Library system. Organized by Yolande Wilburn, the
program took place in the Harold Washington Library Center in downtown Chicago.
This library is opening a Makerspace soon, and its branches are hoping to
provide maker programs as well. The purpose of this workshop was to train
the Coordinators so they can offer e-textile programs in their own branch
libraries.
On the first day,
the program participants learned how to use multimeters to test for
conductivity, and learned about series and parallel circuits by lighting up
LEDs with alligator clips—we discovered that the max number of SuperBright LEDs
that a single 3V battery can light in parallel is 14! They then sewed their
first soft circuit on a quilt square with a single homemade sewable LED, which
is simply a regular LED whose legs have been curled into two flat circles, and finally
they sewed an e-cuff with 3 LEDs in parallel.
The next day, they learned how to make DIY battery holder
and switches. Conductive tape came in very handy for this purpose. DIY
e-textile components help to cut costs, since oftentimes e-textile parts are
prohibitively expensive. The participants then used these homemade parts to
make a project with the LilyTiny, which is a small sewable microcontroller with
4 pre-programmed pins that make LEDs flash according to various patterns:
twinkle, heartbeat, fade, or blink. The workshop participants sewed a LilyTiny
and LEDs onto textiles they had brought in, whether they were t-shirts,
jackets, shirts for their children, bags, or even a fabric disco ball! The session ended with an introduction
to programming the LilyPad Protosnap Development Board with Modkit.
We wish MCPL and Chicago Public Libraries all the best
with their upcoming e-textile and other making programs!
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