In this chapter of the Zero to Maker workshop, we'll be taking a look at textiles and sewing. And in this video, I'm going to argue why it's an extremely underrated and underutilised skill in the maker community, and why you should learn. If you're new to this workshop, we'll be taking you on a fast-paced and practical journey to learn a wide variety of maker skills so that you have the tools and knowledge to make anything. So follow along as we develop our own projects and share insights into the process. When you think of maker skills, you often think of 3D printing and laser cutting and coating up microcontrollers with motors and adding machine vision with a Raspberry Pi. And sewing is often either forgotten or categorized as a skill from that other side of the maker community that also crochets and whatnot. But I think it's a skill that every maker should know.

So this week in Fab Academy, we had an assignment involving textiles and sewing. And my first thought was, what the heck am I going to make? And that I think is the first problem. This is a tool, a process, and because I don't use it and it's not a tool in my maker toolbox, it's not a solution I think of when I approach a problem with a project. And generally, the more tools you have to tackle an issue, the more freedom you have in solving that issue and the better your solution is. After a bit of thinking, I realized I could fix a problem with my project, Leo, which is an omnidirectional indoor robotics platform. So Leo's legs articulate up and down like so. And I wanted something to cover the legs here to help keep fingers out of those nasty pinch points and to help protect it from any accidental wires being unplugged and maybe to just hide the dodgy wiring that might be in there later.

Now, to 3D print or laser cut a part or a cover for this is very difficult because the distance between the body and the wheel changes. So that part would need to flex and warp as the leg moves up and down. I would probably need to make something like you see in knight's armor, where there's lots of little plates that are joined together to allow for movement. Or I could just sew up a sock to cover that. And that's obviously what I did. So we headed down to the fabric store and grabbed some cotton fabric. And this was actually the hardest part of the whole process. Not because we had to find the right material, but because there were so many weird and wacky patterns to choose from. And I just couldn't make up my mind, but I settled on this funky one at the end. Then we headed to the FabLab and got to work.

Now, my sock was really simple. It's actually just kind of a big rectangle of material that I turned into a donut with some elastic on the ends to clamp it onto the leg. And here's where things get really cool. You can laser cut fabric. One of the most annoying things with working with textiles is marking out and cutting out the pattern. But I just went ahead and created a vector file of it. You can do this in Inkscape or Illustrator or even most CAD programs. And I just cut it out on the laser cutter. Now, mine was a simple rectangle, which is easy to cut out by hand. But one of my first iterations had a button to clasp it over the leg. And on the laser cutter, we cut out this buttonhole for it, which was only about a millimetre wide, and it would have been an absolute pain to cut with scissors. But as the laser cuts the material, it also seals it, which helps stops the edge from fraying, especially on more synthetic materials like polyester. And this property alone might be worth using a laser cutter.

With my pattern cut out, I went ahead and sewed up my test sock. And first things first, you can make things really quickly with a sewing machine. A test piece on a 3D print for that leg might take like a few hours, but this took 15 minutes to get a test sock going. And this let me realize I had made it too small really early on, and that the system of attaching the socks with buttons that I wanted to use wouldn't work very well. So within 30 minutes of cutting the first sock out, I was back with another revision cut out. Now, with my proper pattern, I made these socks. And I thought a lot more of this video would be the process of sewing, but it was really easy and straightforward, and it was really quick as well. There are probably some older makers out there laughing at a Gen Z discovering the joys of sewing machines. I've actually done a bit of sewing before, but not in the context of a maker project.

But you just pin your material together. We were cheeky and used these little clips to fasten our material, put it in the machine, hit the pedal, and it's just magic. I sewed these pockets on each end so we can run some elastic through it, and then I just sewed it into a donut like so. Super simple. And each sock only took maybe 20 or 30 minutes each. Now, the process of sewing itself is quick, but the setting up of the machine is where much of the hassle lies. And it differs a little for each machine, but it's really not that difficult. And to make simple things like this socks, it's really a delight. And here are all four of my socks together. The sewing is a little bit sloppy here and there, but as a functional part, they serve their job. And it works exactly like I wanted to. It helps keep fingers out and hides those wires. I made them a bit baggy, but that gives it plenty of room to move.

It also kind of changes the look of the project. It brings a lot more organic geometry to the legs and makes it look less industrial and straight liney, if you kind of know what I mean. I'm really glad that I've re-added this tool to my maker toolbox, because very often in a project, I have two points that move and change distances, and a 3D printed cover for that is a nightmare, but a sock like that, really easy. And I feel like a lot of future robotics projects I do will have some sewing parts in them. Another win for this skill is that a sewing machine is more accessible than a 3D printer or laser cutter. Your local makerspace or fab lab probably has one, or maybe even your parents or a friend, and chances are you know someone with a machine. And if you don't, secondhand machines are really affordable. I'm currently on the hunt for a good secondhand deal to get one for myself.

Another thing is that like moulding and casting, which we looked at a few weeks ago, it has a lot of potential for some really creative applications. I'm just spit boiling here, but you can get really heat resistive and insulated materials you might want to add to your project. Maybe you want to add some protection to your project with some Kevlar. Flexible joints or flexible robotics you can use textiles to make. Our Fab Academy instructor Claire, she made a stuffed creature that uses conductive thread and hooked it up to a touch capacitor so that her project could sense when a human is touching it. Something you might have seen in the maker community is 3D printing onto fabrics, which has become my latest obsession. For Fab Academy we were also experimenting with this technique and I was trying to print a chessboard that you could tie up into a bag so that the bag holds the pieces and you open it and it's also the chessboard.

It didn't work out and it needs some revisions, but it's a cool example of textiles. And there's some pretty darn cool stuff you can make with this. This glove was made the more traditional way where you print onto this nylon netting and then you sew that netting onto something. Here's one for you. One of my next projects, I'm going to try and make paintball armor with 3D prints on textiles. About 10 to 5% of the time when you hit with a paintball, it doesn't explode. It stays intact and it bounces off you. And this is when it really hurts. But if I were to make something like this with maybe some jagged 3D geometry and edges all over it, it will puncture the paintball when it hits and it won't hurt as much. And you can get even more creative and print some camouflage shapes and use different filament colours to get that camouflage colours.

And that about wraps that up and I hope I've convinced you now why you should add sewing and textiles to your maker toolbox. It's a fun, easy and very creative process that opens up possibilities for your projects. Chances are you won't be using sewing in every single one of your projects, but just keeping it in the back of your head so that one day when you face that specific problem, you'll be able to pull that tool out of your toolbox and solve that issue. If you want some resources to get started with sewing or 3D printing on textiles, we'll have some links on the workshop page link below. And we'll also have the rest of this maker workshop there where we look at essential maker skills if you want to check it out. Till next time.