HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT

Fabric Button

also: soft button, textile button, soft switch

These super simple fabric buttons are soft, fun to push and can come in handy when building various prototypes. They all share the same ground or plus, depending on what you hook what up to.
>> Instructable
>> Download stencil

Materials: neoprene (or other fabric), stretch conductive fabric (or non-stretch, depending on previous listed fabric), fusible interfacing, foam, thread
Tools: Scissors, hole maker, cutting mat, sewing needle, iron

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5 Comments so far

e-cultuur weblog» Weblog Archief » Your Textile or Mine, small report on March 12th, 2010

[…] a simple button in the form of a leave. A very simple procedure which you can try out yourself via http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=48. Luckily there were some smart other people who created great things in very little time, like […]
Social Spaces » Blog Archive » Report PuntKom #4 on March 15th, 2010

[…] In her workshop Wendy van Wynsberghe showed how playing with “low-tech” textiles can be “high fun”. By sewing and ironing together conducting and non-conducting textiles, the participants were able to create simple buttons with the looks of their own likings. Plugging the self-made buttons into the ‘Arduino’ sound-installation of Wendy, resulted in an orchestra-like performance: each individual button produced an own, characteristic sound. One button sounded like a skidding cycle tire, the other produced the tones of a bicycle bell and yet another button imitated an object being stuck between the spokes of a cycle tire. By putting them together, a musical of short sounds was produced and the listener easily could imagine himself being surrounded by cyclers and bicycles. A similar procedure as Wendy used, you can try out yourself on: http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=48. […]
wendy on July 26th, 2012

Dear Kobakant ladies,

The tutorial here (downloadable pdf: Download Stencil) is not the one of the button, but the one of the bend sensor.
http://kobakant.at/downloads/stencils/bend-sensor.pdf

The tutorial for the button is here:
http://kobakant.at/downloads/stencils/fabric-button.pdf
(I did some logic thinking)

Just so you know!
Greetz

W
Plusea on September 3rd, 2012

[…] Fabric Button blog post >> Instructable >> Flickr photo set >> Download Instruction […]
eTextile on December 4th, 2014

[…] Neoprene pressure sensor http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=65 Fabric Button http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=48 Neoprene bend sensor […]

Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson

E-Textile Tailor Shop by KOBAKANT

The following institutions have funded our research and supported our work:

From 2013-2015 Mika is a guest professor at the eLab at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee

From July - December 2013 Hannah was a researcher at the UdK's Design Research Lab

From 2010-2012 Mika was a guest researcher in the Smart Textiles Design Lab at The Swedish School of Textiles

From 2009 - 2011 Hannah was a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's High-Low Tech research group led by Leah Buechley

In 2009 Hannah and Mika were both research fellows at the Distance Lab

Between 2003 - 2009 Hannah and Mika were both students at Interface Cultures

We support the Open Source Hardware movement. All our own designs published on this website are released under the Free Cultural Works definition

Fabric Button

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