The experience so far with building the first version of the nightlight has been exciting (Never thought I would have said that about sewing). I have learned quite a bit in trying to make my spherical night light.
The Pattern
I first started off by trying to figure out how to make a sphere. I looked on YouTube where I found some helpful ideas. The goal was to creat a bunch of lenticular shapes and sew them together. Yes, I know this was more challenging than a two sided pattern but I had to. Below is a picture of the shirt I cut the pattern from.
Sewing
The sewing was tricky but not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I made sure to keep the tolerance the same and the result thus far looks nice.
Soldering
Currently the soldering is not fully completed, but as of now I have two functioning lights with resistors and extra wire attached. The goal for class is to attach these to a custom usb/alligator clamp cord that I can use with an external rechargeable battery. Obviously this is not how the actual power source would be, but for testing purposes I think it’ll work very well.
Light Diffusion
The cotton T-shirt material along with the batting allows for ample light to get through the material without it being too bright. I think this is ideal for a night light. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture when I tested it and at the moment will not be able to find a dark enough space until later. (Update to come).