Textile Hacking

Textile Hacking

Duration: one day

  • Wed 14th : Free : 8 spaces [ CLOSED ]
Abstract
Hackers exact perfect control of every bit and byte in their digital lives, but many feel helpless at the mercy of commercial manufacturers to mass-produce textiles for them. Sewing is an under-appreciated technology which allows you to modify or duplicate your proprietary garments, as well as designing new ones from scratch.
Course Overview

This is sewing from first principles:

* What materials threads can be made out of
* Different ways those threads can be assembled into cloth
* Benefits and drawbacks of those materials & methods
* Ways cloth can be attached to other cloth, and their strengths and weaknesses
* How cloth gets colors and prints on it, and how you can change that
* Principles of how to make sewing patterns (from scratch or by copying them from an item you have)
* How to turn cloth and a pattern into an item
* How to mend, reshape, and resize existing textile items (including adding or expanding pockets on literally anything)
* Probably a little bit of history of fashion because a lot of things about clothes make no sense without it

This is not "sit around and practice sewing" time. Attendees have plenty of hours and YouTube outside the conf for that, and I'm convinced that extensive practice time would not be good use of a workshop slot. Attendees are smart and motivated and can practice by themselves just fine; it's figuring out *what* to practice and *how* to tell if you're practicing productively that's hard. Those are what I teach in this workshop.

Prerequisites
It helps to know what clothes are, I guess? Really no experience needed.