SparkFun (with myself as the circuit designer) recently teamed up with DIY.org, a web community that encourages kids to gain skills in all sort of areas – from astronomy to camping to hardware hacking – to bring a new skill to their site: Fabric Hacker. As you might suspect, the Fabric Hacker skill is all about infusing textiles with electronics (something we do a lot of here at SFE). Each skill on DIY.org has a list of “challenges” associated with it – activities and projects that range from “newb” to “pro”. The Fabric Hacker skill has ones like “sew a single LED circuit with conductive thread” or “make wearable fairy wings with EL wire”, each with links to step-by-step instructions. There are 11 challenges up so far, and more to come I’m sure.
The best part, however, is that after you’ve completed a few challenges, you get to order a skill patch, and – being the fabric hackers that we are – we decided to make the badge an e-sewing kit! So when you order the patch from DIY.org, you also kit all the e-sewing supplies you need to make your patch an e-sewing work of art (as well as one of our awesome red boxes).
Check out the badge design with the circuit sewn on – pretty sweet – nice work DIY!
DIY.org is primarily for kids to connect with each other and share their creations, but grown-ups can still check out the challenges, order up patches or other gear, and even help organize a DIY.org meet-up group in your area for local kids to explore, play, and hack the day away – more info on that here.
