How to make a cool cyberpunk top using keyboard bits

Since I found a few keyboards in a skip last year i have been dabbling around with what you can use the parts for (such as my older project and some of the other cool keyboard projects floating around instructables) I'm not *really* obsessed... I just think that you can get a lot of cool stuff out of keyboards. That and they stare at me when i'm working away in my lab (It has comics, art bits, skip findings, nerf guns and mess - essential components that no lab should be without :P)

Anyhoo... theres a terrible student night in wrexham every wednesday - repetitive track list, booozy innebriated frotteurs (its better to not know what that means... trust me) but hey... the drinks are cheap. A select group of art students (ie anyone who has no shame) tend to set their own "theme" for the night - for kicks really, although we do put a lot of effort into it. There have been pirate, pinup, robots/cyberpunk, mermaids (i went as the sea :p) and knights and damesels in distress themed nights and since we are all penniless art students... we have to get a bit creative for the costumes. Anyhoo, tonight is a(nother) cyberpunk night and i'm going to show you how to make this top. (It doesnt help that i've just finished a william gibson and so am all hopped up with cyberlust :p)

PS. machines and tech gubbins make more sense to me than cloth and textiles but its all just the same, the words are different...

Step 1 Materials

You will need:
2 quite close fitting tshirts... The outer one is the one we are going to be attaching the keyboard to and it works wll if this is a dark colour. Likewise the inner one should be a bright colour or contrast in order to show up through the holes and make the circuits visible.
The contact wafer from a computer keyboard - these are several sheets of plastic which the keys touch, making the computer register a keypress. If you can carefully seperate them out we want the two outer ones with the circuit tracings on. You need one of these for each window you want to make.
Scissors

*WARNING* - non tech bits (ie you might need to borrow/use the aid of a friend who is more or a textile geek than you - cheers again jess!)
Sewing machine - you need one that is more suited to working with leather and possibly with thicker needles in order to get through the plastic. Try out with a test sample first to see if it will work or a splode O_o
Thread
Pins

Comments

[jefrimonday]

wow !

[bornahorse]

This is a pretty cool idea! I'll have to try it. Any idea of how it holds up in the wash?

[Treknology]

 As step four suggests, I would seam the "window" of the outer t-shirt and stitch a backing sheet in place (instead of an inner t-shirt). That way the membrane can be fitted into the window, held in place by the seams and perhaps our good friend Mr Velcro meaning it could be removed when it came wash time.

Did the night out include similarly themed jewelry?

[DemonsKat]

such awesomeness with the technological theme...im no good with stuff like that...im better with animals and anatomy lol great job and a loverly instructable :)

[GorillazMiko]

Awesome! Maybe if just the design was on it, that would be pretty cool! Like, all over the shirt. Great job.

[TangMu]

you could use the plastic scan matrixes to create a screenprint screen and print the design all over the T.

[Tinkers4fun]

Nice work on the shirt but I am curious... is it machine washable or would the plastic melt?

[TangMu]

I haven't dared wash this beast as it was made just for a night (It'll get worn again at some point). I think if you used a low heat wash cycle with a 'delicates' setting (ie less than 40 degrees C) It should come out without too much damage.

[xtank5]

Coolio! By the way, that button on the sewing machine that you don't know what it does, It reverses the stitch.

[TangMu]

cheers, the strange fact is that i know my way around a knitting machine more than i do a sewing one... odd

[PKM]

Oh, and I threw away the circuits from the keyboard I took apart for my dissertation. Rubbish.

If you want extra geek points, I believe the technical name for those circuits is a scan matrix, so if you want to work the word "Matrix" into anything similar you make you'll have a linguistic justification. Also, I believe the term for someone who engages in frottage is a frotteur. Just, y'know, for future reference.

Anyway, + for creative use of junk electronics and a cool cyberpunk concept.

[TangMu]

cheers for the french correction. Its also a complete art style where you take rubbings of the surface of things using graphite or anything hand (think brass rubbings you used to do in school). Back in college i was getting a bit obsessed about surface textures and spent an entire french exchange taking rubbings of everything... At one point i was making a rubbing of a manhole cover in paris and an old lady asked me what i was doing. If not for the fact that i had pad and graphite stick in hand i might have been taken away by the police. @_@ And i wondered why my french exchange student kept giving me odd looks and calling them "grattage" instead O_o

[Ward_Nox]

you want to see how creative art students can be visit the school on halloween

[stonehenge360]

ok, I must say this is epic! haha I love instructables that tell me something I would never have thought of!. +1