Sew Electric

by Leah Buechley, Sonja de Boer (Illustrator), Leah Buechley

If you're interested in interactive toys, light-up fashions, or smart accessories, this book is for you! Sew Electric is a set of hands-on LilyPad Arduino tutorials that bring together craft, electronics, and programming. The book walks you through the process of designing and making a series of quirky customizable projects including a sparkling bracelet, a glow in the dark bookmark, a fabric piano, and a monster that sings when you hold its hands. Play with cutting-edge technologies and learn sewing, programming, and circuit design along the way. It's a book for all ages. Explore the projects with your friends, your parents, your kids, or your students!

Genres: Design, Crafts, Nonfiction

185 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published October 30, 2013

Reviews

[Shani · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very clear and well set out book that is informative and includes troubleshooting trips, great for class projects too.

[MusicalMommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great scaffolding and progression of activities to learn about E-Textiles/Soft Circuits. You need some prior experience with coding in order to understand the explanations she gives for each line of code. However, it is not necessary that you know how to code in order to use the book. You can just "copy and paste" the code and not need to understand the coding at all. At the point of the writing, I have completed every one of the projects in the book successfully, except for the fabric piano project with multiple sounds (the last project) that I will try at a later date. I felt that the coding explanations at the back of the book were a bit too much for beginner, intermediate coders (the later sections about arrays etc. etc.) The information is good to know but way too advanced for us to ever be able to apply. Maybe it would be better to just stick with the "beginner" iterations of the code as they still work (though may not be so elegant)? I would have preferred to have information about how to insulate the threads to prevent them from shorting. Also, I would have liked to have information about the conductivity of common materials, and how to use a multimeter to test the conductivity ourselves. (I got that information by serendipity on the internet.) Otherwise, it's been a great start for me to learn about E Textiles/ Soft Circuits and I feel very confident about bringing the projects to my students. P.S. You can see short video clips of the Sew Electric projects I did on my vine account: https://vine.co/u/953425566646833152

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

YA level, basic sewing and intro to programming, clear illustrations, varying levels of projects from simple (bookmark, bracelet), to more challenging (plush, piano keyboard): 4 projects total. Explanation of several Arduino products and how to use them, including Lilypad Arduino SimpleSnap, Lilypad Arduino Protoboard, FTDI Breakout Board/Programming Board, Lilypad Speaker/Lilypad Buzzer, Lilypad LED, and Lilypad Tiny.

[September Michaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to the LilyPad Arduino! Even if you don't want to make these particular projects, you can read the instructions and apply them to your own projects. Great scaffolding--projects start off really basic and get progressively more difficult. Also includes a good "intro. to coding" chapter that shows you the basic shape of Arduino code and how to manipulate it.