also: Interweb, Bondaweb, Fusible, Interfacing, “iron-on“, Fusible web…

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 [...]

This workshop gives a basic overview of how to get analog output from fabric pressure and bend sensors into the computer.

In most applications it is important to isolate the conductive traces. For stretchy traces this requires a stretchy isolation. So far we have experimented and had good results with: stretchy fabric glue, puffy fabric paint and extra layers of fabric.

Stretchy conductive traces are great for wearables because their stretchiness makes these traces comfortable and durable against wear and strain.

also: knitting nancy, knitting machine, German: Strickmühle
also see: circular sock knitting machine
These machines are amazingly easy to use. I bought myself a barbie Knitting machine via Amazon UK because it was cheaper than the more professional looking ones. It works fine for the circular knit but is very messy at the edges when it comes [...]

Great for use in fabric buttons. Used inside the Massage me jackets to make fabric switches, using a hole making tool to make evenly spaced holes, allowing the conductive layers on either side of the foam to make contact.

resistive fabrics are great for making pressure, bend and stretch sensors. There are a range of resistive fabrics available on the market for anti-static and electro magnetic field shielding purposes.

Non-stretchy traces make very stable connections on a non-stretch fabric but make less or no sense when working with stretchy fabrics.

Following the same principal that you’ll find inside a traditional round and slider potentiometers. Both contain a wiper finger (conductive) and a resistive track. Normally both ends of the restive track end in separate measuring point tabs, as does the wiper finger. Thus you can choose to measure from either of the restive track tabs [...]

also: chloroprene
neoprene is the trade name used by DuPont Performance Elastomers. A synthetic rubber that is produced by polymerization of chloroprene.
Sedochemicals produces sheets of Neoprene in the following qualities. For most of our sensors we use 1.5 mm thick HS quality neoprene with standard polyester jersey fused to either side.
Check the Sedochemicals website for details [...]

It is not always easy to find a local fabric store with a nice stock of stretchy and non stretchy fabrics. Online fabric shops have a large range of products, are normally used to shipping you selected samples before you place your order.

We haven’t done any consistent experiments for washability of conductive fabrics, threads and connections. But we have washed the Perfect Human costume containing the neoprene bend sensors more than twice and it is still functioning as before. We excluded the collar and the circuitry from these washed.

Aleen’s Flexible Stretchable Fabric Glue is one of our favorite fabrics glues for isolating conductive materials. Other Anti-fray and liquid iron-on products also come in handy.

Fabric PCB’s are flexible, washable (hopefully) and sewable, even with sewing machines. The method we used is basically following the fabric PCB from Leah Buechley. You need a laser cutter to do this method, since the cut pieces are quite small and needs to be accurate. It will be quite difficult to cut this by [...]

also: air-erasing markers, textile markers
Marking pen, often bright purple in colour, that will vanish without washing. Do not iron over marks because heat will set the marks and they cannot be removed. Test on fabric before using.
For darker fabrics chalk and white pencil works well.

>> http://yarntree.com/cross-stitch/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=5753 (USA)
>> http://www.clotilde.com/detail.html?prod_id=504 (USA)

This joypad is made up of four conductive thread pressure sensors. The analog transition between the directions (up, right, down and left) comes from the buffering material (in this case 3 cm thick squishy packing material) that absorbs and spreads the pressure from the user’s pushing, creating a gradual transition between the inputs.