On Saturday May 21st at 3:00PM fashion designers, engineers and the immensely growing nubbier of wearable technology experts will come together for the ‘eTextile, smart clothing and wearable computing Showcase‘ at the Maker Fair.

The ‘eTextile, smart clothing and wearable computing Showcase’ is a production of Lynne Bruning, one of the most knowledgeable eTextile experts herself.

A long list of designers have already signed up to showcase their eTextile creations but Lynne is still accepting designs to include into the ‘eTextile, smart clothing and wearable computing Showcase’.

If you are interested to show off your design, contact Lynne on or before Wednesday May 11th 2011 under lynne at lynnebruning.com

The program shows a ‘super special secret guest dress’ – I wonder what that could be?

Back after a blogging break caused be work overload the past few weeks and a energetic start into 2011.

The first blog entry for this year is the upcoming workshop ‘Where Electronics Meet Textiles‘ arranged by eTextile guru Lynne Bruning at Sparkfun headquarters.

The two day workshop help on Saturday Jan 15th and Sunday Jan 16th 2011 start off the wearable technology year by getting hands on to electronics, textiles, computers and fashion under the fabulous guidance from Lynne and Troy Nachtigall, an Italian eTextile Master and award winning textile artist.

As special guest of the workshop, Nwanua Elumeze, founder of Aniomagic, will share his company’s hardware advancements in eTextiles.

The workshop cost is $175 which includes the Lilypad Pro Kit and special fabric sensors from Plug and Wear.

Workshop location: Sparkfun Classroom 6175 Longbow Drive, Suite 200 Boulder, CO 80301

Hurry up and register, the class size is limited, sign up here or here

A Happy New Year, good to be back online again.

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.

The sweet summer holidays are coming to an end for most part of the world it’s time to quickly catch up in the working schedules.

To help you get back into the wearable technology event calendar here is a reminder for the upcoming ‘World Maker Faire New York eTextile Fashion Show‘ running from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26

The ‘eTextile Fashion Show’ is a production by Lynne Bruning who welcomes anyone to enter smart textile creations by sending her an email at: lynne@lynnebruning.com

There is no need for you to have a Maker Faire Booth Application, only bring your willingness to walk the runway with your design and share your creative power with other Makers.

The ‘World Maker Faire New York 2010‘ will be held at the New York Hall of Science.

Lynne is accepting projects which must be wearable, smart, computer driven, and/or interactive until Sept. 15

Maker Faire, the #1 event for DIY enthusiasts and Lynne Bruning the #1 in eTextile design teamed up to organize a show that fuses technology and fashion in form of Maker Faire’s first Wearable Computing Fashion Show.

Lynne, textile enchantress and creator of award winning wearable art and eTextiles is welcoming all eTextile designers to participate in the Wearable Computing Fashion Show.

If you are around the San Francisco Bay Area and attending the Maker Faire contact Lynne at lynne at lynnebruning.com and she will be more than happy to get your creation on stage and present your work next to designs by: Aniomagic, Grace Kim, LulieVision and Shannon Henry.

The eTextile Fashion Show will take place on Saturday, 22nd May at 3:00pm at the Fiesta Hall Stage.

Lynne gives also a demonstration on how to create Conductive Fabric based on her large portfolio of DIY instructions she created. The demonstration ‘Conductive Fabric: Methods and Materials‘ will be on Sunday 23rd May at the Maker Faire as well.

An event not to be missed when you are around the Bay area, a place to pick up interesting infos around eTextiles.

We have covered before various DIY projects using toy pianos, take them apart and add soft, textile like keypads to be integrated in shirts for a playful – literally – experimentation with eTextile materials.

Tara Pattenden, visual artist in the field of media – video, sound and installation is creating a range of audio masks for her masters thesis at the Aalto Universities Media Lab in Helsinki / Finland.

Her motivation of designing audible masks is to create tradition/costumes/ritual for an imaginary culture, trying to create something real, yet foreign. The photo shows the Pianowl mask, her third mask with integrated audio.

Being a visual artist, Tara’s most important aspect is ‘the way one plays the mask contributs to the character of the mask.’

Tara started to set up her Instructables page to post the Pianowl and other masks with documentation how she integrated the soft piano keys which she simply constructed using a kitchen sponge and conductive thread.

Future interactive mask and costume designs will feature motion sensors for a fully body shaggy costume,  teeth that pull out and wings that create sound when they flap.

Interactive, animated costumes for artistic performances represent a interesting application field for eTextile technologies, especially for DIY projects as these costumes are usually one-off objects.

I love the idea using clothing to record the daily life like whom we meet, where we have been, what we have done and so on.

Collecting these memories on-the-go does not require attention from the wearer, it just happens. Later we can review and reflect on the days events.

Laura Boffi, student at CIID Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design developed together with Mary Huang the Meet&Playback glove which records every time you meet a friend and shake hands or give hi5.

The meeting and action will be stored as a music note. Later in the day the wearer can play back the gloves memory in a random melody form.

Meet&Playback glove from laura boffi on Vimeo.

The fingerless glove is fitted with two knitted capacitive sensors made from conductive yarn and one piezo sensor. The sensors are connected to an Arduino which is doing the musical memory conversion.

A very attractive and inspirational twist for creating memory rich clothing.

Shannon Henry, owner of the Polymath Design Lab transformed a hand-sewn tulle wrap skirt into a star light sparkling evening gown by integrating fiber optics and lights that change color in response to the speed and direction of the wearer’s movement.

At the center of the starlight skirt is a LilyPad which translates the motion sensors input into different colors of the stars placed throughout the skirt, creating a dynamic light pattern.

The complete eTextile system is sewn on to the purple organza under-layer of the skirt parting nicely the technical part from it to allow a nice textile flow of the outer skirt but also diffuses, soften the light point a bit giving the magical effect.

Although Shannon’s design is a bit more complex than the one we posted yesterday about, it still is stunning in it’s simplicity of making it but equally amazing, magical in the appearance and the effect a bit of textile illumination adds to clothing.

A beautiful, sensual, magical use of textile illumination.

[via: Switch]

Creating stylish conductive fabric is easier then you might think, assuming you follow the fabulous instruction from Lynne Bruning on her Instructables.

Lynne keeps on adding creative ideas on how to electrify textiles. Her Instructables collection is full of tips, excellent documented with material resources, written and photo guides to make the process as easy and painlessly as it can get.

Today I like to point out two recent additions, one that shows how to fuse Angelina Fibers and frying conductive yarns, yarns that usually are not so useful for the use in sewing machines, into conductive fabric patches.

Lynne explains to process to fuse Angelina Fibers with strands of conductive yarn making a fusible, electrically conductive fabric patch that can be used to decorate fashion designs and give these decoration a electrical function.

The second DIY instruction is showing how to use needle felting to create electrically conductive fabric. Both methods allow you to create the level of conductivity you need for your project.

At the same time you have all the creative freedom to design the fabrics, touch and visual appearance, to your individual needs. Two excellent additions to your eTextile tool box.

This weeks eTextile DIY project proposal is definitely falling in the cute category. Val Head created for her cute dog Tucker and Light-up dog hoodie. Most of the time we are stretching ourselves to figure out how and where to use eTextile tech for our clothing but seldom we think about our cute friends from the animal kingdom.

The hoodie does not light up by flicking a button, it does light up by itself when it gets dark during your walk with your dog. Just use a photo resistor like Val is using and the cute magic is perfect.

Val posted 23 photos from the making-off the Light-up dog hoodie on her Flickr account with tips and considerations when making a light element for a dogs hoodie.

She is not using the LilyPad due to limited space on the small hoodie. LED sequins, button cell batteries (although they have very limited power and need to be replaced frequently), a small circular pref-board which holds the photo and other electrical components. If you need a little help in creating a light sensitive switch, check out this link.

Now get our your eTextile tool box and spice up your dogs or cats clothing with some illumination.