Looking for a special something for your special someone to give a electrifying Valentine’s Day gift? Here is a tip: Sparkfun is running a Plushbot Class on Saturday Feb 11th at the Sparkfun HQ in Boulder, CO from 9am until 5pm

The eTextile class centers around the Plushbot design, which incorporates electronics into stuffed animals to create interactive toys.

This class offers a excellent opportunity not only to pick up eTextile tips and tricks but also to walk away with a one-of-a-kind Valentine’s Day present.

Instructors of this class will be Yingdan Huang, the creator of the Plushbot, Lindsay, Jeff and Dia, eTextile goddess at Sparkfun.

You will learn about and handle eTextile elements like light sensor, LEDs, switches and buzzer, flex sensor, conductive thread, felt, a 1000mAh Lipo Battery and a LilyPad Simple Board.

Minimum requirement for participation is to thread a needle – in case you are not that far yet – still time to practice until Saturday.

You will also need to bring your own laptop with Arduino software installed – please see all details on Sparkfun’s website.

Wish you a happy sewing, stitching and switching.

Good news for the DIY wearable electronic community: the Soft Circuit Contest by Instructables has extended it’s submission deadline giving you another week to post your textile project.

Don’t miss the opportunity to win a LilyPad Micro-controller Programmer Pro kit, a Salt n’ Peanut soft circuit kit from Soft-Circuit.com and an Instructables prize pack including an Instructables T-Shirt and a one year pro membership.

So far a few creative entries have been made like the Light-up Leggings submitted by Instructables member Carleyy.

Given the clear instructions to follow, the Light Up Leggings is a cute, relatively simple project that adds some sparkle to leggings but Carleyy’s sparkle design can be used to light up jeans or jackets alike.

A techno touch to your wardrobe for the darker time of the year ahead and a good opportunity to get a first introduction into soft circuit design.

Check out this and other soft circuit designs to get inspired and submit your eTextile project to Instructables until Oct 10th, the extended submission deadline and you might get a well deserved reward for it.

Almost 2 years ago we beamed up on talk2myShirt the plan of Studio 5050 to created a set of wearable electronic modules that allow designers and DIY enthusiasts to concentrate on the design rather than spending time of putting together the electronics in a textile friendly way.

The waiting time for theses modules is over. Despina Papadopoulos, founder of Studio 5050 and Zach Eveland, president of Blacklabel Development, officially launched the ‘fabrickit‘, a collection of wearable electronic modules or ‘bricks’, at World Maker Fair in New York last weekend.

The first modules available include a removable, rechargeable Coin Cell Battery Brick, x-LED Brick with built-in resistor and a Snap Connector Brick which makes connections fast and easy.

As you might imagine, the ‘fabrickit’ collection will be expanded over time adding the most common function one needs for a wearable electronic project.

Great attention has been given not only to the functionality design but also the appliance of the ‘fabrickit’ modules which look so good I can imagine using them as design element rather than to hide them away underneath layers of fabrics.

‘Fabrickit’ design files are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Check out the ‘fabrickit’ library and pick up your first modules bricks at the ‘fabrickit’ store.

‘How to get what you Want‘ is certainly the first address every eTextile enthusiast working or planning textile electronic projects. It’s full of amazing tips and tricks coming from Hannah Perner-Wilson, one of the sites main contributor.

New techniques are added very frequently so check out ‘How to get what you Want’ again and again. I am only giving here on talk2myShirt occasional reminders and re-posting about new items which completely amaze me like the fabric PCB etching by using a solution of vinegar and salt and Vaseline as resist.

The term ‘innovating on a kitchen table’ has never before been so literally as with this amazingly simple but highly innovative technique.

The recipe for this technological soup is very simple: 100ml vinegar mixed with 7ml salt. Take copper polyester Taffeta fabric from LessEMF for example, cover your layout with Vaseline and put it into the eTextile circuit fabric etching solution.

Out comes a clean etched copper pattern on a off-white textile substrate.

For a much more detailed background description, the different materials that could or might be used, check out the article at ‘How to get what you Want‘. Via Hannah’s Flickr stream you can see a load of photos of different layout artwork and the processing steps.

I am truly stunned by this technique which not only allows a simple way to etch PCB specifically for textile electronic it also allows to make artwork out of traces that usually made from straight lines, integrating the electronic needs (connecting traces) into the aesthetic of a wearable electronic design.

CU Boulder GEEN 1400 Engineering Costumes students Chris Francklyn, Diana George, Jenna Sobieray and Alex Cossoff posted a hot-cool project on Instructables, the ‘How to make a Heating and Cooling Jacket‘ project.

The jacket has the capability to sense the temperature inside the jacket and turning on the heating or cooling elements as needed to to keep a preset constant temperature. This would mean especially during spring and autumn when the temperature outside makes usually erratic jumps between extremes, this cool jacket could be a hot clothing item.

The team uses the LilyPad as the intelligent part of the jacket to collect the temperature sensor data throughout the jacket – a total of six sensors are used/recommendet – and indicates the temperature via LEDs which can be place like in this instructions or in other forms fitting to your style taste.

Components such as the LilyPad, temperature sensors, LEDs and power supply are placed preferable on a removable inner liner and connected via conductive yarn. A removable inner liner has the advantage the intelligent part of the jacket could theoretically be used in different jackets as long as the inner liner fits in them. It also allows a hassle free cleaning of the outer shell of a jackets by unzipping the inner part.

A cool feature is to add flexible solar panels to the outer shell or hood making use of sunlight to generate power for the LilyPad and LEDs.

Before you get now very exited about making a heating/cooling jacket, the current Instructables contains only the temperature sensing part and flexible solar panel integration. The team will follow up on this project next month by adding heating and cooling technologies.

I am very curious to see what their proposal will be I only know that many reader of talk2myShirt have heating and/or cooling garments very high on their wish lists.

Kanjun Qiu created at the MIT Media Lab for the High-Low Tech research group the beautifully designed Soundie, a hoodie with touch sensitive areas triggering sound and light effects.

The Soundie is Kanjun’s exploration into eTextiles and the LilyPad system. The result is the Soundie, one of the best demonstrator/prototypes I have come across in my restless search for wearable electronic developments.

This project combines most to the eTextile elements and techniques, giving an excellent overview about the use of textile optimized components and technologies.

The complexity of building the Soundie is medium as Kanjun has published a very detailed overview on Instructables.

You will find every step carefully explained including a comprehensive material list starting with the LilyPad main board, power and light modules, conductive fabric and thread, a speaker module and a piece of clothing you want to upgrade with light and sound.

The Instructables includes the Arduino source code to get you started quickly and to serve as basis for further hacking to your own liking.

Kanjun’s motivation to create the Soundie was  ‘… to inspire other applications. The Soundie was designed  with purely artistic intentions and with absolutely no practical applications in mind.’

The eTextile toolbox just got a big addition in form of Plug and Wear‘s Textile Prefboard, courtesy of my creative friend Riccardo.

Prefboards are used by electronic wizards to quickly put together a circuit during development and for testing. Needless to say – this is one of the most essential parts in their toolbox.

Riccardo picked up this need for having a prototyping possibility for eTextile wizards and used his skills and machinery to knit the first ever textile Prefboard.

The Textile Prefboard has conductive lines in one knit direction. The spacing between the lines is 2.54mm (0.1″) just like on the conventional, stiff Prefboards. The maximum working temperature of the knitted eTextile is 300°C (572°F) for a short period which means it can be used to solder components directly on the conductive lines of the Textile Prefboard.

Most importantly, you can place and fix the components with a needle and yarn. Both options are nicely documented on Plug and Wear’s website, here the method of soldering and here the method of sewing.

Personally I am in favor of the sewing method as it will give more robustness to the textile circuit. Sewing joints are more flexible, they can accommodate the movements and to a certain degree elasticity of textile materials.

Solder points are stiff and once broken, even a tiny hairline crack renders the whole circuit useless.

Now head over to Plug and Wear and spice up your eTextile toolbox with a Textile Prefboard which sells for €10.- ($14.30) for a 15 cm x 15 cm (6″ x 6″) size.

Triggered by Jennifer Dopazo‘s short presentation posting on Fashioning Technology about the process of fabricating an ‘iron on textile PCB’, I looked around to see what options the eTextile designer has when it comes to softening up the electronic world.

If you every wondered how a textile PCB can be made, flip through the presentation below. It’s by far not as complicated than to create a hard, stiff, conventional PCB. Calm down electronic fan boys and girls – textile PCBs are also by far not as complex as their stiff grand father.

Beside the Iron-on conductive fabric there are other options to create a textile PCB like the DIY multi layer PCB from Lynne Bruning – my personal favorite of making soft circuit boards sheets.

Another method is to use embroidery technique or sewing to create a network of conductive lines with electrically conductive yarn on a piece of cloth as show here for example on EduWear’s website.

Knowing about the different options on soft circuit creation allows wearable electronic fashion designer to select the method best fitting to their creation process and for DIY enthusiasts plenty of ideas for the next soft circuit projects.

‘e-Static Shadows‘ is a research project by designer Dr. Zane Berzina and architect Jackson Tan which creatively explores the speculative and poetic potential of static electricity found in our everyday environments, surrounding our everyday interactions.

The aim of the project is to investigate how electrostatic energy could either be effectively utilized or play a part in the development of active, responsive and interactive textile systems which would be capable of detecting, translating and displaying this energy into dynamic audio-visual patterns.

Most noticeable for us e-textile enthusiasts is the making of this beautifully aesthetically swaying curtain made of a woven e-textile matrix with incorporated woven sensors for static detection and LEDs which light up or dim down based on the electro static field around the curtains sections.

A excellent source of inspiration and knowledge sharing about e-textile weaving, the challenges, the possibilities, the e_Static Shadows Process page has an impressive ‘the making off’, split in 3 sections, with tons of photos documenting how the team around these two e-textile wizards in cooperation with TITV Greiz, The Institute for Special textiles and Flexible Materials, made this extraordinary e-textile structure possible.

This beautiful installation was exhibited at the Dana Centre, Science Museum London at the begin of March 2009.

All photos in this article are taken from the e_Static Shadows project site.

Threadbanger, a network for people who love DIY, recreate, refashion and craft, posted a video and Instructables showing Fashion Nerd Diana Eng teaching the basics of ‘How to Sew with Conductive Thread‘ on the project ‘Robot and Friend’ from her book ‘Fashion Geek‘.

The materials needed for this e-textile beginners guide are easy to organize: fabric for sewing, conductive thread, scissors, two LEDs, CR2032 watch battery, BS7 battery holder, disappearing ink pen, needle-nose pliers, regular thread, wire cutters, and a sewing needle.

I like the use of disappearing ink – it’s a nice trick for drawing the layout/traces for sewing but disappears when you are finished.

If you do not have Diana’s book you can download the Robot and Friend pattern from ThreadBanger.

The combination of the Instructables guide complimented with a video tutorial makes ‘How to Sew with Conductive Thread’ lively and easy to follow.