Resources: Wearables & E-textiles
- Sparkfun Lilypad Center – Sparkfun offers the Lilypad family of boards and sewable electronic parts. The site includes tutorials, videos, and guides.
- Lilypad Arduino – The Lilypad Arduino family of boards are designed for projects using textiles and wearable electronics. The Arduino website has instructions for getting started.
- Adafruit Wearables – Flora and Gemma microcontroller resources, plus other tutorials and videos for sewable electronics and programming.
- Gellacraft – Tutorials and ideas for e-textiles, sewable projects, costume design, and more from Angela Sheehan, a maker and educator.
- Getting Hands-on with Soft Circuits – An e-textile workshop facilitators guide by Emily Lovell (e-book)
- How To Get What You Want – This website collects projects, global workshops and events, references, tutorials, and more for wearable technology and soft circuits. It has a unique section on techniques that aren’t finished projects, but might spark ideas.
- Fashioning Tech – Syuzi Pakhchyan is an experience designer whose work investigates the intersection between code, cloth and culture. If you like the blog, you might also like her book.
- e-Textiles in a Box – Free resource from the National Council of Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) provides activities that teach about sewing soft circuits and programming.
- Stitching the Loop – A project-based electronic textile unit for Exploring Computer Science, a high school intro level CS course, but could be adapted for lower grades. Free downloadable guides offer extensive teacher and student resources.
- Soft Robotics Toolkit – Resources to support the design, fabrication, and control of soft robotic devices, originally developed by the Harvard Biodesign Lab with additional contributions such as an open source fluidic control board, soft actuators and sensors, and other downloadable files. Hosts an annual design competition.
- Sew Electric – by Leah Buechley, Kanjun Qiu, and Sonja de Boer. This book contains projects ranging from simple to complex that teach different aspects of sewing with electronics, leading up to programming the Lilypad Arduino.
- Textile Messages: Dispatches from the World of E-Textiles and Education – By Kylie Peppler, Leah Buechley, Michael Eisenberg, and Yasmin Kafai. This book contains both the “what” and “why” of using e-textiles in education.
- Arduino Wearables – by Tony Olsson. This book is a project-based introduction to wearable computing, prototyping, and smart materials using the Arduino platform. Each of the ten chapters takes you all the way from idea to finished project, gradually increasing in complexity and challenge.
- Sewing School: 21 Sewing Projects Kids Will Love to Make – This beautifully photographed spiral-bound book by Andria Lisle will help kids age 5-13 develop sewing skills to support your eTextile projects or inspire projects that may be electrified! There are projects that will appeal to both boys and girls, and the photos are gender-balanced.
- A Child’s First Sewing Book: Mid-century Hand-sewing Inspiration and Projects for Children – A charming reproduction of a mid-century sewing instruction book, filled with practical illustrations and diagrams for kids age 8+.