My Plush Night is inspired by Ghost Fireflies, they are a rare type of fireflies that can be sighted in the mountains of North Carolina during the Summer months.
Luna the firefly is designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Sometimes children with autism may be highly sensitive to certain textures and other senses. Luna is designed to be a support buddy and help the child cope better in a situation of sensory overload.
Sketch
Materials
Felt
Black and White Material
Yarn
Buttons
Fiber Fill
Pom Poms
Needle and Thread
Pattern
Process
I enjoyed this project as a whole. I have never made an electrical circuit before, so it was a great learning experience. If I had more time, I would work on the details of the night light and probably improve my sewing and patterns.
The story behind this project stems from a song by the band Turnstile. People often look to music as an escape from the real world. This night light is to be placed in a window for people walking the streets and act a symbol to passersby that they are not the only one dealing with dark thoughts or negativity. It is meant to GLOW and act as a light to let others not they are not in this alone. The heart is a symbol to express love and gratitude for others and encourage everyone to let their authentic self glow like this light. Here’s my process and the final result!
Here’s the song Alien Love Call – Turnstile for those interested in checking it out 🙂
Luna, is a little ladybird. She is very soft and her bright warm colors, melts any child’s heart. Luna, is special; she lights up at night! Children love to give it a hug. It helps them sleep soundly through the night. Its soothing presence gives them comfort and company. Luna is a charming plush toy that also sparks storytelling among children.
Meet Luna!🧚♀️🌝🤍
Luna, the ladybird is inspired by my own love of chasing ladybirds in the park, during my childhood and bringing them back to my room. Sadly, I know from experience that the real ones start to die at night and need to be in their natural habitat. I also really telling stories about these little creatures I would capture. These incidents inspired me to paint them on my room’s ceiling fan! Its sweet how my parent’s have moved places but still ket the blades of that fan. :’)
My room’s ceiling fan, that I painted as a child and served as an inspiration for Luna!
About the process, overall this was a very satisfying thing to make. I was terrified of sewing before this project. It was my first time sewing, but my day was made when Loujong at the Visible Future’s Lab and she told me, “I have been sewing for so long but even my work isn’t as neat looking as yours!”
The whole thing started with careful planning. I bought three different kinds of fabrics with one of them being translucent/see through fabric and the others made out of soft plush wool. From the very beginning, I realized I chosen a very ambitious design for my project with less than a week’s time and only a limited number of options to book the lab for sewing. I think I did an excellent job with time management since I was done with most of my sewing before Monday. I however struggled a little bit because of lack of soldering and circuit making experience. I also first struggled with sourcing the white colored LEDs. I soldered it once and my 6 white LEDS were not evenly dim, even though I put them all in parallel, with 100 Ohm resistance each. I think the whole circuit was loosing some energy in the way I did my connections. Then I took help from my classmates who had more experience and put together a neater more efficient circuit! So happy that it all worked out well!
Have you ever thought that everybody in another part of the world is seeing the same star, moon, sky, etc? Well, maybe not at the same time, but for sure it was the same light. Distance is a just number and stars keep shining no matter the distance, right?
So, Larry Starry is representing the Ursa Minor constellation and aims to remind people that no matter how far they are from someone they love, they are still connected.
A perfect night light for those who likes stars, constellations, and even especially for those days when we need a friendly reminder of how we are all connected.
ExpectationReality 🙂Ursa Minor constellation
Materials used for this project:
Fabric
Fyber fill
Sewing Machine
Thread
Soldering Iron
Heat gun
7 LEDs
7 resistors
Wires
1 Battery
The process:
My thoughts:
Personally, the journey of making things is the best part of creating. Although it took me more time to finish this project than planned, it was quite funny and insightful how we keep learning by using our creativity.
Trying to keep the soldered connections together was challenging. I have many! But I did it. If I had more time, I would like to create a larger pattern or try different LEDs and forms.
This plushie is designed for those who are struggling with mental illness to find comfort, as well as for loved ones of someone suffering from mental illness in order to gain some perspective on something that you may not know anything about or have experienced yourself. It is a dual educational and therapeutic tool, intended to “shed light” on the misconceptions of prescription medication, by getting to the core of their purpose.
For this project I used the following materials:
-Orange Linen
-White cotton
-White Linen
-Silk thread (in both white and orange)
-Acrylic fiberfill
-AAA battery pack
-Acrylic
-Stranded core wire
-Heat shrink
-Resisters
-LED’s
-Soldering iron
-Clothes iron
-Sewing needle
-Velcro
-Chip board
For this project I soldered, which I had never done before, sewed, which I had done sparingly in the past, and used the laser cutter which I had never done before. All of the new experiences were anxiety provoking to a point and then enjoyable for a while and then annoying. I enjoyed soldering the most however and would love to do more of that in future projects. The most challenging thing in this project was working with fabric, period. It is such a finicky medium and requires a touch that i have heretofore not acquired.
If I were to do this project again, I would one spend more time getting the seams just right on my piece, preventing the mistakes from snowballing down the road, and two add more LED’s (and add ones that aren’t red so I don’t end up with a more sinister message than I was intending).
A night light for anyone who has been (un)fortunate to experience the trials and tribulations of dating in New York City.
The bear with its big heart and long arms is a reminder that love might just be around the corner and until then it will help you through your sadly eventual heartbreak/disappointment/catfish and serve as a shining beacon of hope of what might be.
patternmaking the circuitping pong ball for diffusion
For this project I used the following- – Fabric – Thread – Buttons – Stuffing – Sewing Machine – Soldering Iron – Resistors – Wire – LEDs – Heat Shrink Tubing
The ping pong ball worked wonderfully to diffuse the light! If I were to redo this project I would use more LED lights to try to make the light more bright or use a different tolerance resistor.
I have mild night blindness, therefore I want to have a light helping me walking at night. I choose the fish shape because light reminds me of some types of fish in the deep sea which light up by themselves.
This is my first time sewing and soldering, also choosing fabrics. So I made mistakes in almost every steps – bought not suitable cloth, trimed the cloth in wrong size, forgot buying LEDs, connected bulbs in wrong way, placed LEDs in wrong place. But it’s fun and I learned a lot after every mistake.
The idea for my night light was inspired from the concept of how kids are scared of “monsters under the bed”. I wanted to change or reduce the fear within kids by creating a cute monster that the kids can hug when they go to sleep. My monster, named Randall Boo, lights up when you hug. The lights are placed in the main hug touch points, like the arms and the heart.
The materials I used for the project were:
Soft stretchy orange fabric
Dark blue silk-like fabric
Thread – white and orange
3 white LEDs
Stranded wires
3 100 ohm resistors
Heat shrink tubes
Battery pack with switch
3 AAA batteries
White cotton stuffing
My Journey
I was very excited for this project as a lot of things I did were for the very first time. I made a plan on what materials to use, where to place the LEDs, how to sew the pieces together and so on.
I started my process with the soldering of the LEDs as I wanted to make sure I had enough time to get the lighting up of the LEDs right. The soldering was a lot of fun and getting the LEDs to light up was a very proud moment for me!
The LEDs lit up yay!
The sewing was a little challenging since my plush monster had a few parts that had to be stitched together. I had to plan out my sewing steps as my LEDs were positioned in different areas of the plush toy. Since I had LEDs in the arms, I had to place them before stitching it all together. Hence, I used the machine to sew the different parts and hand sew the different parts together instead of using the machine.
Another challenge I faced during the process was the breaking of my circuit. After all the components were put together, the battery wire broke from the parallel LED circuit as I had forgotten to add the heat shrink tubes there and hence, had to re-solder the battery wire to the circuit. This time I remembered to add the heat shrink tubes!
Here are some more pictures of my process:
If I had more time to work on this project, I would have definitely added more “sass” to my monster character like I have shown in my initial sketch. I would have added a belt, more flare to the pants and arms and a pocket to the pants to keep the battery pack. I also wanted to add velcro to the arms so that the arms would stick when you hug it. Moreover, I would have experimented a bit more with the LEDs to see what combination of the LEDs worked the best for the toy.
Even though this project was quite challenging, I definitely learned a lot. I can sew a button or a small tear with confidence now! And Randall Boo is going to be my desk buddy from here on!
The innitiall idea was having a ghost shape toy for children to hold when they go to toilet at night. With a toy, they have something to hold this can make them more sucure. I imagine the toy can be their friendly ghost to protect in the way at night. The eyes can be used as flash light, so they can have better sight going to the toilet.
This nightlight was primarily made for myself and others who enjoy the cute and humorous character that is gudetama. As you can see, I have used the LEDs to highlight the most important feature of gudetama – his derrière. He also has a heart tramp stamp because he has class!!! The plush provides a warm and comfortable tactile experience as well as some humour every time you look at it!
Material + Parts
2 White LEDS
2 100 Ohm Resitors
Battery pack with switch
3 AAA Batteries
Shrink Tube
2 types of fabric: white (stretchy) and orange (textured and transparent)
Sewing Needle and Thread
Cotton Stuffing
My Journey
Everything about this journey was new. I used a soldering iron, sewing machine, hand sewing techniques, and created something I am really happy with!
There were a lot of surprises. I was first worried that the circuit portion of this assignment was going to be the most difficult, but surprisingly I found that the sewing and putting my pattern together took the most mental acrobatics.
If I had more time to work on this project, I would want to make the buttocks portion a bit cleaner by refining refine the sewing and shape.
