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

Stretchy conductive fabric traces

Stretchy conductive fabric traces are not that hard to make. We find the easiest solution to be fusing strips of stretch conductive fabric to the garment. This can even be done after the garment has been sewn together.

Once you get used to making them, they become so easy. In preparation it is best to adhere fusible interfacing to a large (long) piece of stretch conductive fabric and then cut this into 1 – 0.5 mm wide strips. The wider, the less resistance. They are easily fused to the stretchy fabric and to make curved lines there is no need to cut out curved pieces, you can simply stretch them around the curve. If they are too short you can also overlap them a cm or two and this is fine for the electrical connection. The strips hold nicely with the fusible for a while, but do tend to come loose after much stretching. They can be fused back on by simply ironing over them again. In most cases it makes sense to isolate conductive traces. For stretchy conductive traces a stretchy isolation method makes most sense. The isolation can also help keep the traces in place.

Non-stretch conductive fabric for stretchy conductive traces

Nadya Peek’s stretchy conductive traces made from non-stretch conductive fabrics look great.
>> http://infosyncratic.nl/weblog/2009/04/12/stretchy-conductive-traces/

Stretchy conductive thread traces

We haven’t got (yet) many examples of stretchy conductive traces sewn with thread. This tends to be because it is just much easier to apply stretchy fabric traces with fusible interfacing. It is also easier to apply traces with fusible, after it has been sewn.

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