Makey-Bag

A small scale workshop: A Makey (or other image) on a textile with light up eyes.

We just need a bag (or other piece of fabric), 2 rivets with 8mm hole for textiles, thermo transfer foil for textiles and finally a short piece of WS2812 leds (20 leds/m) and a micro controller. (We use a special one, https://www.instructables.com/StripNanite/, but are working on a better solution. But others will work as well, just not that small).

First cut out a motive with a vinyl cutter. If you want to light up the eyes, makes sure to scale the motive that both size and distance of both eyes fit to your LED strip. Then iron the motive on your textile (or use a heat press).

The eyes will then punched out and rivets inserted. The controller will be soldered on the strip and programmed with the Arduino IDE. Use e.g. the FastLED library and their colorpalette demo. The only thing to change is usign pin 0 for the LED strip and 2 leds on 255 brightness. This LED strip will be then put behind the rivets ans fixated with a piece of wide duct tape (swing fabric would be nicer, but we are lazy).

Finally, fil out the rivets on front with hot glue as diffusor material, or glue in a small piece of lasercut diffuse acrylic or a 3D-printed, 8mm circle - a bit more preparation, but less heat intake for the LEDs.

Done and enjoy!