Tule Overskirt With Simple Lighting by LED Strips

I made a blue tule overskirt for my niece, Garrison, whose high school has a mid-winter's dance next month. 8 vertical LED strips (powered by a Gemma controller) are placed randomly around the skirt and light up.

Materials

3 meters of Adafruit DotStar LED Strips - Addressable Warm White- 60 LED/m 3 m 3000K

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2436?length=4

1 Adafruit Gemma MO- miniature weable electronic platform

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3501

1 Lithium Ion Polymer Battery

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1578

budget pack for Metro-328

https://www.adafruit.com/product/193

4 different colors stranded-core wire

alligator clip wires

heat shrink-tubing

glue for glue gun

20 yards tulle

polyester or cotton fabric to cover waist band- 24" x 60" should be plenty

sewing thread

sewing needle

sewing pins

sew-on hook and eye closure

Tools

soldering iron and solder

third-hand tool

wire stripper

wire cutter

glue gun and glue (optional)

scissors

soft measuring tape

hands or sewing machine

Take your 20 yards of tule and double it then fold it in half, pin it. Attach from end to end and fold 4 more times. Pin again.

Gather pleats at the top so they are roughly the same distance (no big deal if they're not) ending up the size of the person's waist PLUS 3" (so will overlap 1.5" on both sides.)

Create a mockup of where the Gemma controller, wires and 8 LED strips will go. Cut pieces of rope and use binder clips to hold the space for the strips and put a cotton pad where the Gemma would go. Use a soft measuring tape to measure the distance from the cotton (Gemma) to each rope (LED strips). Now, cut 4 different colors of wires for each of the 8 strips to those lengths. Cut the LED strips to any length you wish. I chose 13".

Take the 8 sets of 4 different colored wires and strip the ends. Solder the 4 wires to the 4 open ends of the LED strips. Heat shrink the ends. (I hot glued them also but I don't think there's any benefit to doing that.)

Test each wire strand to be sure you have solid soldering. Run the sample strand test in Arduino. (standtest.ino)

Run the Arduino file to the Gemma controller. File attached.

Once you know all strands light, solder the other ends to the Gemma. Note it is easiest to solder all wires to a separate same color wire and solder that one wire to the Gemma. Wiring pic above.

Plug battery into Gemma and turn the tiny on button. Lights should light up your awesome dress!