When it comes to creating a carneval costume, sewing is a hard part. Whilst you might find someone with a sewing machine, getting to an appropriate sewing pattern is yet another challange. During our research we came across https://freesewing.org/. It allows you to put your body measures, select a sewing pattern and automatically create a tailor fitted draft. A draft which you then have to transfer to your fabric, cut out and stitch together. As simple as that.
In our case we needed to mount 2000 LEDs and for each LED 4 tiny and one small hole. Therefore we developped a small workflow that works on a small laser, which you might find on a fablab, such as fablab Zürich:
https://zurich.fablab.ch/
Ever wanted to be a model? This is the way to start on freesewing.org. Create a model and put your body measures there. These will be used later to create a draft.
On freesweing.org different patterns are available. We prototyped several patterns with different fabrics to fine tune the wrinkles in conjunctions with LED PCB mocks. At the end the pattern of a suit (Jaeger) was the best.
Once you've selected your pattern, you can draft it by choosing a model.
This is the automatically created sewing pattern. For us this served just as a basis and needed some significant rework. Under Download it is possible to get either a PDF or an SVG file.
The typical workflow then looked like this:
Ready to laser? - Not yet!
Before you start the laser, it is recommended to do a couple of tests. We tested several fabric types to see how well the lasers melts together the fibres. As you can see on the white samples some nasty shades can be seen. As well the laser removes some extra material. This can be seen on the black samples, where we actually tried to laser a cross, that now looks like a star.
This is how the final parts then look like.