Sunday, January 03, 2010

Technique of the Week #1 - "Soft Circuitry"


Project hours: about 7
2 hours design + research
5 hours execution


I got a fabric circuitry kit for Christmas, and I had been dying to try some of the things from Craft/Make magazine about fashion technology. I thought this could be adapted to a quilt, and I was pretty ecstatic with the results.


First off, this is an interpretation of a taningia danae squid.  I say "interpretation" because not only is it a cartoon version, but the tentacles that exhibit the bioluminescence are exaggeratedly long.  Oh well!  I was researching cephalopods for my themes and came across bioluminescence and thought this was a great connection for my LED circuit project!


Here is a photo of the back of the quilt so you can see my "circuitry".  Basically, I took 2 blue LEDs and connected the positives to the back side of my coin cell battery holder, and the negatives to the front. The battery does have to be inserted correctly.  The "holder" is just a folded over piece of cloth, sewn to the back after I connected the conductive threads to the right poles.  It's nice and tight, and the battery has a good connection inside.  This holder has a benefit of being flat against a wall if I were to hang the quilt. 

A great start to my goal for a "technique a week"! I plan to provide the hours each one takes me to execute so you get a good idea of how intricate some of the methods are.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where or where does one get a circuitry kit? I really want to try something with this. Thanks for sharing. Anatomically correct or not that thing is beautiful, inspiring, and so much fun.

Anonymous said...

I can't find an RSS feed. Is it possible to link your blog to that?

Cheryl said...

http://blog.muppin.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

This is the better feed. Thanks!

Ginga Squid said...

I love this!!!!
(From a fellow cephalopod lover)

Unknown said...

I saw this in Craftzine & stopped by to say how great (& cute) this is. Thanks for posting it!

Jason R said...

So fircking awesome.

TheFrogBag said...

This is the coolest thing I have seen all week by far!

Anonymous said...

that is so cool - thanks for sharing. :)

Carolyn B said...

Totslly glowing awesome!

M. Rock said...

I just got the baby LED circuitry kit from Make and was trying to find a project I wanted to do with it.

You've inspired me to do a patch with a knit squid! I'll post links when I've finished it, but thanks so much for your technique of the week (I just read through the rest of them, they're all really cool)!

Jenny Squawk said...

Love your project. I'm linking to this post to show LEDs in quilts. Such a great example of LEDs in quilts!