Tangible E-Textile Interface for Digital Patternmaking with Soft Goods

Team: Lucy Dunne (Faculty - PI), Heidi Woelfle (Staff), Olaitan Adeleke (Research Assistant)

Program: Wearable Technology Lab

Can we capture the physical information provided by fashion designers draping patterns on the form to simultaneously digitize the pattern for CAD applications?

Apparel designers often prefer the tangible process of creating garment patterns by draping fabric on a mannequin, rather than the more abstract process of drafting patterns in 2D using CAD software. The current workaround is to drape a pattern, then digitize it on a digitizing table in order to transfer the shape to the CAD environment. 

This project explores augmenting the fabric used to drape patterns with e-textile components, such that the activity of pinning the fabric to the form serves to directly digitize the shape made by the designer.  The e-textile interface uses a keypad matrix approach with rows and columns on opposite sides of the fabric. Passing a metallic pin through a row/column intersection creates a circuit connection that is read by a microcontroller and mapped to a 2D spatial layout on the screen. The proof-of-concept device developed here is a first step toward an automatic digitizing system that allows designers to better preserve the manual skills and processes while integrating with digital systems.

Funder/Client/Benefactor: University of Minnesota Early Innovation Fund