A Beautiful Dress Enhanced with Fiber Optics #WearableWednesday
Fiber optic cables have helped us communicate faster across the planet, enabling telecommunications on a grand scale. These cords can carry light for high-speed data connections. They can also carry light that looks pretty. Here’s a project from Natalina on Instructables on making a fiber optic dress:
The design of the dress followed the fiber optics that it needed to support. As there is one central light source, I designed the back to include a pouch for the handle, and the straps of the dress to bring the fiber optics from the center back to the front, and back around the body to an even distribution at the hips.
A big design challenge was how to give the filaments enough lift at the skirt, as I wanted the skirt to push them out at as near to a 90 degree angle as possible. I was considering things like a fully boned structure or 3D printing small pieces for each group of filaments to angle them out at a perfect right angle. However in the end I just went low tech and stuffed the skirt with tutus 🙂 I’d still like to explore these other two options eventually.
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