5-6 December 2008
DIY Art and Technology Festival
Zurich, Switzerland
This workshop aims to be a short introduction into simple soft fabric electronic circuits. The materials used are cheap and off the shelf, so that the practice introduced in the workshop can be continued at home. Sewing, soldering and experimenting with materials is not hard and should become everyday practice.

In our projects we often work with soft conductive and resistive fabrics to create wearable electronics from cheap, basic and off-the-shelf materials. We would like to introduce some of the techniques we have developed as well as present some of the basic elements we use, such as soft fabric bend and pressure sensors, buttons, switches, battery pouches, connections… and demonstrate their functionality through simple circuits that we chose for their availability, simplicity and affordability.

Pictures on Flickr

Relevant Links

Mika’s Instructable
Hannah’s Instructable
www.KOBAKANT.at
www.cs.colorado.edu/~buechley
www.sparkfun.com
www.lessemf.com
www.talk2myshirt.com/blog/

Materials

conductive fabric, conductive thread, fusible, poppers, metal faseners, hook-up wire, sponge, velostat, neoprene, regular fabric, regular thread, t-shirts or other (old) clothing items, power supply, components or circuit…

Tools

Sewing needles, sewing machine, iron and board, soldering stations, wire cutters, wire strippers, pliers, multi-meters, hole makers, cutting mats, fabric scissors, popper machines, pens and paper…