During this sewable electronic project, i believe that i had lots of experiences. My original plan was doing interactive stuffed monster and making a monster. However, designing a monster was quite hard to me and i thought that making stuffed monster would be take a lot of time at cutting and sewing so i decided to change my plan to an interactive mural which looked really cool. In addition, i put polar bear for my character because in an animation that i know, polar bear is a main character which is really cute! It is not a change but i was concerning between blue and green LEDS but finally i chose blue. The reason is that my felt colors blue therefore i thought that blue looks better than green. About electronic components, needed circuit playground express, an app that i used to make a code and to light LEDS up! Battery pack.

There was no materials that i needed. Basically i was trying to light LEDS on its eyes. Be more specific, i used A2; output to two blue LEDS, A3: input to contribute LED. Other details are a polar bear was holding a pen and a paper which means that ‘Do no disturb’. I used white for its body, black for pen, gray for paper and black for footprints, eyes and nose. Back felt’s size was 20, 25. During this activity, i learned how to use circuit playground express. First time of using it was really hard and complicating but now i understand how to use it which is really good! If i have a chance to try this activity again, i will try interactive stuffed monster. (or not)

back part of the project                                                              in front of the project                                                       planning sheet

During this activity, i made a character, KoYa which is a cute koala and i chose it because it had simple and comfortable design to work on. My other designs were a brown cookie and a character, Charlie Brown. The brown cookie’s size was kind of small to make by thread and i  really wanted to use Charlie Brown for my design but it was complicating to make it. Therefore i thought that Koala would be the best and the most comfortable design.

I learned many professional and basic sewing words such as running stitch, chain stitch, back stitch, straight stitch and bury. The first time of sewing back stitch was hard and unclear for me because i only could do running stitch at that time but after practicing, i overcame it! If i have a chance to say something to next semester’s students, i would tell them to watch many videos which demonstrate basic sewings. For instance, back stitch. I just want to try another design which is more hard than this koala.

I think it is such a good experience to try!!

Chloe Kang