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Fit for purpose? Pattern cutting and seams in wearables development

This paper presents findings on interdisciplinary ‘smart textiles’ and wearables practice through reflections on a work in progress. It exposed textile designers and fashion practitioners to new audiences and questions, and revealed the value in practice hidden by familiarity. It followed a series of conference papers (Sensors and Fabrication, 86th World Textiles Conference, Hong Kong, 2008; Textiles, Shape and Sensor, Futurotextiel, Brussels, 2008; Reflections on supporting emergent post-disciplinary research, Association of Fashion & Textile Courses, 2008; and Knitted Stretch Sensors for Sound Output, 4th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded & Embodied Interactions, MIT, 2010); an online journal publication (Textile Enquiry and Design: Aeolia, Duck Journal for Research in Textiles and Textile Design, 2010), a poster presentation (Leading Technical Textiles Research, Another Side of Fashion, The Fashion for Smart Materials, Science Museum, London, 2008), and a book chapter (Technical Textiles, in Briggs-Goode, A. & K. Townsend (Eds), Textile design: principles, advances and applications, Cambridge: Woodhead 2010). Practice has been exhibited at the Visual Research Centre, Dundee and the MIT Media Lab (2010), with the British Council in Milan, with New Media Scotland at the CCA, Glasgow, and at the Informatics Forum, Edinburgh University, (2009). Further developments have been presented at the Design4Health European Conference (2011).

The paper led to a presentation to the Multimodal Research Group in the School of Computing at Glasgow University, and samples of the knitted stretch sensor were supplied for gestural analysis in sports (fencing). Physical outputs of the research were shown at Wanderlust at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (2011), and enjoyed international coverage through Sabine Seymour’s Functional Aesthetics (Springer-Verlag 2011); see FashionLab’s Book of The Week June 2012 http://www.3ds.com/fashionlab/en/mag/article/the-book-of-the-week-functional-aesthetics-visions-in-fashionable-technology-by-sabine-seymour), and Seymour’s TEDx Vienna talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6p9ErHQi4). This project contributed to the formation of a new centre for research in advanced textiles (CReATe) at Nottingham Trent University (http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/groups_centres/art/create.html).