Crafting Wearables: Blending Technology with Fashion

Crafting Wearables promotes interest and excitement around the growing field of wearable technology. As wearables become embedded in more consumer products on a micro-level, people are losing touch with the basic craft of fashioning clothes and accessories. From learning how to repair a button to learning how to design light-up shoes, readers will learn the importance of honing their sewing and crafting skills and passing them on to future generations. Written for hobbyist, beginner, and expert alike this book provides a fundamental understanding of how electronics and digital media are becoming a natural part of our ＂second skin＂. It’s important as our clothes and devices become smarter and more connected to understand the possibilities wearable technology presents for monitoring health, disrupting the fashion industry, and more! Crafting Wearables imparts that understanding and helps convert readers from passive bystanders to active shapers of the future in fashion.

Sibel Deren Guler is a physicist, designer, and educator based in New York. She researches and develops technology that uses interactivity and computation to explore nature and create playful experiences. Designing accessible tools to improve the quality of life and empower the user is her key motivator. She has led design and engineering-based workshops around the world and has been exploring wearable technology for several years through personal research and collaboration. She is creator of a series of toolkits under the Teknikio brand enabling you to embed smart materials and electronics into clothing and craft projects, and employs those kits to fill a gap in hands-on science and engineering products for children, especially for young girls. She uses e-textiles in Teknikio to teach concepts of fashion design and engineering. Guler has a personal interest in fashion design that she credits to her mother and grandmother who are incredible seamstresses. She is a co-founder of the FatCatFabLab, and adjuncts at Parsons the New School for Design.