Sew Red, White, and Blue with Wearables and Soft Circuits

When you combine circuit building, conductive thread, LEDs, and fabric, you can, literally, wear your electronics on your sleeve!

Above: Made with conductive thread, this little monster is a fun and kid-friendly electronic textile patch that lights up red, white, and blue!

There may be plenty of loud, booming, and colorful nighttime celebrations for local 4th of July celebrations. Even before the sun goes down, the sounds of fireworks begin, sometimes starting days in advance of the official holiday. The Discover the Flaming Colors of Fireworks STEM activity is a great way for families to get hands-on with a science investigation that helps kids connect science to the anticipated fireworks finale, but you don't have to set something on fire to create a portable burst of celebratory color and light!

While you wait for your local fireworks display to start, you and your kids can create personalized red, white, and blue light-up displays that you can wear, wave, or carry. With a needle, some conductive thread, and a few electronics parts, you can sew your own lighted soft circuits to show off your national pride.

Sewing Soft Circuits

Wearable electronics, also known as wearables, electronic textiles, or e-textiles, are fabric- and thread-based electronics projects that approach wiring and circuitry from a new—softer—angle. Sew the components in place, being careful not to cross threads and keeping positive and negative traces separate, and you can add custom electronics to clothing or other fabric items.

Read to Sew Your Own?

The Use Sewable Circuits to Make Cool Costumes and Accessories project helps students design and sew clothing, a costume, or a fashion accessory with sewn-in electronics. You can add soft circuits to a backpack, a jacket, wristband, hat, or other piece of clothing.

Make a Light-up Glove

The LED Dance Glove: Get the Party Started with Your Own Interactive Light Show project also contains directions for creating an introductory soft circuit "dance glove" that can be used to create cool light effects in the dark. Change things up a bit with the LEDs you choose, and you can create your own light-up gloves for the 4th of July using a combination of red, white, and blue LEDs.

The dance glove project features a simple circuit with an on and off switch, a coin cell battery holder, and some Lilypad LEDs. The project requires no programming (the lights are either flipped on or off), so the project is a great first step in designing and sewing wearable electronics. Sew the elements of the circuit in place, flip the switch, and wear your science with pride!

More Inspiration

For more inspiration about using e-textiles circuits for patches, see the following posts:

• Sewing Electronics: Wearables that Light Up
• Wearable Electronics: Sewing an LED Patch

For additional science projects to explore wearables and e-textiles, see 8 Wearables Science Projects.