Today, I attended the ThreadTech Workshop at the Edge in Southbank, Brisbane. The Edge is a digital culture centre and an initiative of State Library of Queensland. They offer free or low cost Workshops.

Today’s workshop was free and all the materials were supplied.

The workshop is described as follows in the Edge website;

ThreadTech workshops by Colleen Morgan
Step into the world of future fashion at our ThreadTech workshops.  In the introductory workshop you will learn how to sew a circuit with LEDs and conductive thread to make your very own light laden motif.  Come along to the advanced workshop to up the ante and learn how to program LED lights to flash, fade and blink. Prior experience required for the advanced workshop.

At the moment, I am very interested in LED lights and electric circuit, so I was very excited when I found this workshop.   I am attending how to program the lighting effects next Saturday and I am looking forward to it.

Materials: 4 x Lily PadLED Lights, Conductive Thread (Silver plated nylon), Coin Power Battery CR2032, Battery Holder

You can buy LilyPad LED lights and Conductive Thread at   Little Bird Electronics http://littlebirdelectronics.com/ (Australia), and Battery Holder at Jaycar http://www.jaycar.com.au/

I chose 3 red lights and one yellow. I want to try blue and white next time.  The instructor, Colleen said that blue lights seem to use more power than other lights.  With Battery we used today, 4 lights would be maximum.

 

Then you think of the design.Where to locate the lights. You have to saw one thread for positives and connect to the positive side of battery holder, another thread for negatives and connect to the negative side of the battery holder.

I chose a heart for my design and chose a cream kind of fabric to saw.

When you design the circuit, you have to be careful with not touching positive thread and negative thread.

Saw the Battery holder at the back.

 

Place a battery and you are done.

After I came home, I tried to see through with other fabrics and you can see different effects on each fabric.  It is very interesting and I really enjoyed the workshop.

They are hand washable (not with the battery).

I was not sure whether the shape of the heart can be seen. I was happy that I can see the heart shape in the dark (showing at the top)

I cannot wait to learn more next week.