Color Changing Fiber Optic Fabric

Intro: Color Changing Fiber Optic Fabric

At about $150 a yard and with plenty of cutting limitations, fiber optic fabric on the market isn't the most accessible material. But with your own fiber optic filament, tulle, and LEDs, you can create your own in any shape for a fraction of the price.

STEP 1: Materials

• Tulle
• .75mm fiber optic filament (see Step 2 for more details)
• Addressable RGB LEDs
• Sewable microcontroller of your choice (I used a Gemma)
• Electrical tape
• Mini rubber bands
• Battery pack
• Hair straightener
• Heat shrink tubing (optional)

My cost was around $80 total: $15 for a 500 foot spool of fiber optics, $14 for a string of ~60 LEDs (I only needed ~18), $10 for the Gemma, $15 for the lithium battery, and $25 for fabric. Your mileage will vary depending on the length of your design, type of fabric, cost of LEDs, and availability of microcontrollers/battery packs.

The time to completion was around 30 hours, with at least 10 of those going towards weaving the fibers into the tulle.

STEP 2: Crunch the Numbers

Fiber optics

The wider your fiber optic filament, the more light can pass through, and the sturdier the tube will be. I found .75mm to be perfect for weaving through tulle. Narrower filaments are cheaper and more flexible, but you'll require more of them to achieve the same glow.

I purchased a 500 foot spool and used about 350 feet in the creation of a long circle skirt, with my fibers laying .5cm - 1cm apart at the inner radius. To calculate roughly the amount of fiber you'll need, divide the width of your fabric by the amount of space you would like between filaments. Multiply this number by the length of your fabric plus 6 inches.

Cut your fibers about 6 inches longer than the length of your fabric. The excess will be bundled and attached to the LEDs.

LEDs

You will need RGB LEDs to change the color of the fabric. You will also need to attach the fibers perpendicular to the light source, as shown in step 7, so NeoPixel strips are not the best candidate. Finally, if designing for clothing, you'll need something that lies relatively flat against the body. With all these parameters in mind, I chose individually addressable bulb-like LEDs connected by flexible wire.

Fabric

The tulle and fiber optic combination in this Instructable is very translucent. The simplest way to add it to a project would be as a top layer over a more opaque fabric. When designing your project, remember that your fiber tips will all need to feed into a light source, and most light will be emitted at the opposite end. As long as you can design something with enough support for the lights and battery pack, and ensure that the fibers have a light source, you can create any size and shape you want!

STEP 3: Straighten the Fibers

Most fiber optic filament will come tightly curled around a spool. Don't fret! A hair straightener works wonders. I did not have any success with an iron; heat from both sides seemed to be essential.

Cut your filaments to the desired length and bundle them together in groups of 5-10. Secure one end with a rubber band. Wet a washclosh slightly and use it to insulate the fibers as you slowly drag the straightener down the length of the filament. This will protect both your iron and the filaments from the direct heat. Repeat as many times as necessary to get the filaments nice and straight.

STEP 4: Weave

By taking advantage of tulle's natural netting structure, you can keep your fibers in place while avoiding the need for hand sewing or individual channels.

Subdivide your tulle into halves, quarters, and so on to give yourself benchmarks for inserting fibers. It may be helpful to layer your tulle over a giant sheet of graph paper or pre-drawn parallel lines. Once you've guaranteed that the first few fibers are inserted perfectly parallel, they are easier to use as a guideline for the rest.

Begin weaving by poking a single strand of filament into the netting. Avoid tearing new holes; try to use the structure already there. Continue to weave the filament through the tulle every few inches. When weaving, favor one side of the fabric over the other; keeping the majority of your filament on one side will make it easier to sand later.

You may want to intersperse some fibers that are shorter than the full length of your fabric, too. This will spread specks of light more evenly throughout your project. See step 9 for ways to even out the light distribution.

STEP 5: Bundle Fibers

Subdivide your fibers into groups (just one group is shown in the leftmost picture). For my 0.8 cm LED heads, bundles of about 20 fibers worked well. A few inches beyond the edge of the fabric, gently guide the fibers together and secure them together with a mini rubber band. Try to prevent your fibers from going more than 3 inches past the edge of your fabric.

STEP 6: Sew

After your fibers are secured, sew your tulle/optic hybrid however you'd like. I layered mine over several skirts. Once the LEDs are attached to your fabric, it will become too ungainly to put under a sewing machine, so plan to hand sew anything after this step.

Design ahead to accommodate the LEDs, microcontroller, and battery pack. I chose to have my LEDs in a giant waistband that got covered by the dress bodice.

STEP 7: Attach LEDs

Now it's time to attach the LEDs! This will likely require some experimentation based on the shape of your bulb.

Materials

Electrical tape is your friend.

My first attempt involved several layers of heat shrink tubing, which was not very effective since the bundle of fibers was much smaller than the radius of the LED. If you choose to use heat shrink, test your heat gun on a throwaway bundle of fibers first -- too much heat will melt them.

While super glue will keep your fibers from budging, it significantly dulled the light in my test bundle, and dissolved the rubber band. I wouldn't recommend it.

Attaching

Ultimately, my most effective method was face-to-face electrical tape.

Start by trimming your fiber bundles just beyond the rubber band. A nice even surface will help the light shine into all fibers equally. Cut two pieces of electrical tape long enough to cover the LED as well as the fibers up to the rubber band. Sandwich your LED and fiber bundle between these two pieces of electrical tape as tightly as possible, and repeat for each LED in your fabric. If your LEDs still have exposed surfaces, use more electrical tape to prevent light from leaking.

STEP 8: Add Microcontroller

Solder power, ground, and data lines between your microcontroller and your LEDs. I used a Gemma since it's flat, lightweight, and easy to power.

Now it's time to decide how you'd like your fabric to cycle through colors. If you're adding any sensor-triggered effects, now is the time to solder those components as well. I used Adafruit's rainbow() NeoPixel function, which you can find here. Remember to change the parameters at the top to match your data pin number and number of LEDs.

STEP 9: Sand the Fibers

Now for the fun part: coaxing more light out of your fibers wherever you'd like. Nicking the fiber optic casing allows some light to escape. My two most successful tools for this were sandpaper and an open pair of scissors. For sandpaper, you can choose to sand at random intervals, or "strip" the ends 1-2 cm from the tip for a gradual glow. For scissors, open them wide and use a single blade to repeatedly tap the fiber. I recommend doing this in a dark room with the LEDs on so you can see your progress.

Left photo: sanded fiber (top); unsanded fiber (bottom).

Right photo: All fibers sanded about 2cm from the tips.

STEP 10: Power Up!

I'm a big fan of the Gemma's JST battery plugin. I directly plugged in a lithium 3.7V 2500mAh battery that sits in the back waistband of the dress. Consider the weight, lifetime, and size of your battery in relation to your project.

Power up your board, turn out the lights, and watch your fabric sparkle!

Comments

[watsonmaddie]

I'm having a lot of trouble programming the GEMMA and figuring out what wires to solder?

[spookydonuts]

The arrow on the green chip inside your LEDs indicate that signal should flow from the Gemma to the LED in that direction. I can’t tell from the photo, but the green chip should also say in very small letters which one is power (V or 5V), which one is ground (GND), and which is data (sometimes labeled D or IN). If it’s not on the chip, the tiny letters may be printed on the wires themselves.

[allyjoerin]

Could anyone provide some links to the materials listed above? I just want to make sure I'm getting the right thing, thanks!

[IlsaC]

Hi did you make a video of this dress. I am having a little difficult and understanding how the light are put on the dress

[spookydonuts]

The lights were pretty much held in place between the waist of the wearer and the outer fabric of the bodice. They weren't very secure at all, so I would recommend playing around with any other method you can think of to attach them.

[Fabricfibres121]

Hey! I know this post has been up for a while so you may not remember, but do you have any idea how much strands of optic fibre you used? Like when you cut them and then gathered them, was it 50, or 80 or 100 or 200? And additionally do you kmow the width of your fabric, I wanna know if I’m gonna buy enough so it’s not super sparse !

[spookydonuts]

Hi! Each LED bundle had 8-10 strands, and my very rough estimate is that there were ~18 bundles, so a total of 180 or so strands. The more strands you can use, the better it will look. My fabric was a skirt that flared out, so the fibres looked really good at the top where the fabric was thin (maybe ~30"?), and got much sparser towards the end (~60"). The fabric pictured is the top - middle part of the skirt.

[Fabricfibres121]

Thank you! I’m a little confused about the numbers tho, you said in another comment that you made 3 yards worth of fabric with these, but if you only used 350 yards, and 180 stands , would you not need 540yards or fibre?

[spookydonuts]

Ah, the pattern was cut from 3 yard fabric, but the area to be covered was much smaller once it was cut from a rectangle shape to a circle skirt pattern and sewn.

[cathymai]

I saw in the comments you said the LEDs you used were clunky. I want to make a beautiful dress with this method to wow my boyfriend and his family around Thanksgiving (so I have time to make it) and i have a few questions. If you were to make this again, what LEDs would you use? Can you link the fiber optic that you used or would use? Do you think this could work for a simple bodice as well? And what would you recommend using to secure the fiber optics to the leds? Sorry about all the questions but I appreciate you taking the time to answer any if you can. I'm new to sewing (on and off for years) and this really inspired me.

[spookydonuts]

Hi!
Here's the fiber optic I used (only used ~60% of the roll): https://www.ebay.com/itm/500-FT-of-75-mm-Fiber-Optic-Filament-End-Glow-for-models-star-ceilings-projects/274327973285?epid=1555475088&hash=item3fdf38ada5:g:Ht8AAMXQO21Ry3tX

If I were to remake this dress, I would sacrifice the color changing LEDs (heavy and clunky) for a single color strand of lights (e.g. Christmas lights). You can see in step 7 that the LEDs I used were much bigger than my fiber bundles, so securing the optics to the LEDs with heat shrink tubing did not work at all for me. I think you'd have moderate success with using heat shrink tubing on thinner lights like Christmas lights. The tricky part is that the light has to shine directly down the fiber optic tube.

Before you do any design planning, including whether to add a bodice, try as many methods as you can think of to attach bundles of fiber to LED tips. The security of the connection you can get is going to dictate a lot of your design options.

Good luck! I would love to see pictures, and don't hesitate to let me know if you have more questions.

[jennaldb]

This looks amazing! I'm trying to do something similar... Do you know where you got your fiber optic material from? I'm looking online and not seeing anything close to $15! If you could provide a link from where you got yours that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! :)

[SelinaM13]

Im working on a similar project in school right now but I have some questions.
Could you use a complete set of Led's? So you dont have to buy a battery pack and everything else extra

And do you think leds like to one on the picture would work aswell?

and could you sand the filaments before weaving them into the fabric?

Thank you!

[spookydonuts]

Hello! A complete set of LEDs should work just fine. I think you would need much larger LEDs than the ones in the picture, though. If you want all the fibers to light up, every strand needs to have a light shining directly into it. It seems like you'd only be able to get 1-2 fibers attached to each LED with those, but if you choose wider lights, you might be able to get bundles of 10 or more fibers attached to each light. You can definitely sand the filaments before weaving them in! Seeing the light shining through the filaments might change your decision about where to sand and how much, though, so consider that. Let me know if you have any more questions!

[laurelhk]

Oh my goodness, this is AWESOME! I'm a high school costumer and really want to jazz up the Fairy Godmother for our upcoming Cinderella.

Would it work to sew my garment and then weave the optic strands through afterwards? Was thinking of a white satin layer, covering every panel in tulle, and then weaving (of course keeping in mind connection points etc.

Also, if we add a powerful enough battery/driver and I sand the fibers will they be visible under stage lighting? I want a subtle effect, doesn't have to be super bright. But I also don't want to go to all this trouble and have it not show up!

Thanks!

[spookydonuts]

This would look so magical for your Fairy Godmother! My biggest concern would be the lighting you mentioned. I found that the fiber optics are really only noticeably bright in almost complete darkness (the last two pictures were in a darker environment than it seems). If there will still be a fair amount of light on stage, I would consider something like this instructable : https://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Skirt/
which uses much more powerful lighting. I've made a similar version that is quite bright even in full lighting, feel free to send me any questions you might have about adapting this to your needs.

If you do go with my fiber optic version, keep in mind that your lights and battery will need to live on the same side of the fabric as the fibers. So if you weave the filament on the outer tulle layer, the lights would need to be covered up by extra panels on the bodice / a large waistband.

This is a great idea for your costume, please don't hesitate with any future questions! :)

[laurelhk]

Thanks so much for your prompt reply! Really appreciate it :-)
I should have added I'm a parent costumer, not a student!
I looked at the skirt you suggested. My only issue is you can still see the individual bulbs, which I was trying to avoid so the effect was more "magical".
My husband is in tech and has access to "lots of the things". He has some ultra bright LEDs that he thought might provide enough light to show some glow under stage lights. Do you have any thoughts on this? Or were you already using ultrabrights?

I can also ask our lighting designer to assist with perhaps dimming that part of the stage while the Fairy Godmother does her thing. My husband suggested he could put some sort of servo switch in her wand to activate the skirt while she's casting her spells. Sounds complicated to me!

Cheers,
Laurel

[spookydonuts]

I agree that the fiber optics look much more magical than the LED strips! I did not have ultra bright LEDs, so that would be a step in the right direction. Keep in mind that the amount of light you can output is bounded by the diameter of the fiber tube, though. If you have the time to weave the tubes more densely, that would be very helpful, too — mine were anywhere between a quarter inch and an inch apart, which is not as dense as I would’ve liked. If you have the budget, I would recommend buying a spool of fiber optics and holding them up to your LEDs to get a feel for how much light you’ll get.

I also want to give you plenty of notice that the electrical tape method of attachment wasn’t super effective. The fiber bundles kept popping out when I was transporting the dress. Superglue had a tendency to melt my rubber bands. You might have some success with heat shrink tubing, depending on the shape of your LEDs.

With some experimentation, I think you’ll have a stunning dress! It may seem daunting but the results are worth it :)

[madlne2006]

This looks so cute. Where did you incorporate the battery pack?

[spookydonuts]

Thank you! :) It's sitting in the back by the zipper, right above the waist. There's a small pocket so it can sit between the dress lining and the skin.