I was at FabLearn the last couple of days and one of the highlights was definitely the soft circuits workshop I took. Even though we had only a short amount of time, many of us teachers were determined to finish a stuffed animal project that would light up.
Here’s my little light-up whale:
The whale was one of the standard patterns given to us and I thought that as a former electrical engineer, I would blast right through it. Ha! Yeah, right! Turns out sewing circuits is a LOT different from breadboard, which my mind is way more used to. I can’t tell you how many times I had to undo the stitches and start over.
Looking back, I really should have sat down and drawn out the circuit paths before I jumped into sewing. Once I started sewing, I kept forgetting which path was supposed to connect with which side of which component and kept getting myself confused. If I ever do soft circuits with kids, I will definitely insist they do some planning first!