Hello!
So I haven't been doing too many projects because of final lately although I was able to pump one out with my girlfriend.
Check it out!
Well done,
Can you tell more about the materials used ? the process, problems you encountered and how you solved them ( there are not so much "Art" stories here mostly tech)
And possibly a youtube to see the dress in action?
There isn't a youtube video. It only lights up.
The dress (Hi, it's the girlfriend talking here)
First, I began with fabrics that fitted the requirements-sheer and reactive to UV lights. Despite many white fabric variations, some reflected brighter than others. The sheer fabric I ended up using is called, Organza. I ended up going through many dress prototypes, and I resulted in the bodice that you see, and the skirt with 16 panels, shaped to give the skirt structure. Within each skirt panel seam, I did a specialty seam that would allow them to lay flat, and I striped plastic boning pieces thinner, and inserted them within the enclosed seams. I also finished the hem with boning to make the skirt span out. With the flowers, I made each of them by hand, burning the edges with a lighter so that they would curve out and resemble a rose. There are about 45 handcrafted flowers. Keep in mind, as an apparel major, it almost took me a month to make this dress - and organza is very hard to work with- so if you want to make something similar, you might want to contact an apparel major.
Hey its me again(the engineer)
Mainly the only issues that I encountered was the wire. A 22 gauge wire was much too thin and broke all the time, not to mention while soldering the joint, the wire became extremely hot even though it had insulation. To fix that, I salvaged some of my breadboard prototyping wires and now those are in the dress. Defiantly keeping them organized was difficult since we couldn't use any colored wire since it would stand out. To fix that, we used nail polish since a sharpie didn't stay on the insulation of the wire. If you get past all of that, you will need to find some way of keeping the clump of wires together, so you just twist them together.
Organization: the way the dress was wired was we brought all the anodes together on one side, soldered them all together and then soldered another wire that would represent those anodes on that side. We did that with all the cathodes as well as all the others on the other side of the dress. After we had those we, connected both anode representation wires together and then the two cathode representation wires together and had an extra wire hanging off of each one, the two extra wires(one from the anode and one from the cathode) were then connected to a JST socket. We then had the battery have a JST connector. This is how we kept it organized.
Another tip is to have a piece of hard paper or something that you can put between the dress and the solder joint. Keeps the solder from sticking to the dress if it falls.
So there ya go, that is how we made the dress 
Mainly the only issues that I encountered was the wire. A 22 gauge wire was much too thin and broke all the time, not to mention while soldering the joint, the wire became extremely hot even though it had insulation. To fix that, I salvaged some of my breadboard prototyping wires and now those are in the dress.
Have you seen this? Conductive Stainless Fiber - 1oz - DEV-10868 - SparkFun Electronics Have you tried it?
There isn't a youtube video.
Why????????????
Thanks for the explanation!
Yes, We actually did buy some conductive thread although we found it to be very unreliable. Some of the leds were dimmer than we wanted because the resistivity of the conductive thread wasn't constant. That was the most dissapointing part of the development.
funkyguy4000:
I was able to pump one out with my girlfriend.
cool story, bro
haha.
great looking outcome, and some good photography too
Yea we had a photography student do the pictures. Best part about it was it was free since she could use it for her portfolio, since it was such a special addition, she was more than happy to do it for no charge.