E-Textiles Project: Make an Electro-Fashion® Hand Puppet

2025-05-29 | By Kitronik Maker

License: See Original Project

Guide by Kitronik Maker

This Make Covers:‎

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Today, wearing tech is nothing new. Smartwatches, for instance, are regularly used to ‎monitor and track health-based body stats, smart glasses can help translate text in real-‎time, footballers often wear trackers to plot their movements on the pitch so that they can ‎improve their skills, and cosplayers often sew electronics into their costumes so that they ‎can do things like light up or react to sound!‎

This blog from Emma will go through a simple, classroom-friendly e-textiles make. ‎ElectroFashion® is Kitronik’s range of e-textiles components and materials made to be as ‎simple and easy to use as possible!‎

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We Have Used:‎

Alternatively, for a single project:‎

Electro-Fashion® Sewable Light Kit (2737)‎
Electro-Fashion® Slide Switch (2709)‎
Needle Set (2741)‎
Non-Conductive Thread
Felt Fabric
Our outline template

‎1 Design your Puppet!‎

We’ve provided a basic hand puppet outline for you to use, not just to draw on to plan your ‎design, but also to print and cut out as a cutting pattern for your fabric! Click the link below ‎to download the outline.‎

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As you can see, our original design is a lot more detailed than the final puppet - it’s ‎important to keep your design simple so that it doesn’t take too long or become too difficult ‎to sew.‎

Download the Outline

‎‎2 Put together the main puppet body.

Either by sewing as we have, or using fabric glue, put together the majority of your puppet, ‎excluding the parts that will contain the electronics.‎

For us, that’s the head, and we want the electronics to be visible on the outside. This means ‎we put both sides of the puppet together before this step, but if you want to hide the battery ‎or switch on the inside, you’ll want to add the electronics before connecting both sides.‎

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‎‎3 Begin adding the electronics.‎

We are using our LEDs to light the eyes, so we’ve looped around the pads a few times to ‎secure them in place and to ensure a good connection with the conductive thread, before ‎connecting positive to positive, and negative to negative, as indicated by the + (positive) ‎and - (negative) signs next to the pads. We are connecting them in parallel.‎

Note: If you’re also putting the electronics on the outside as we are, make sure not to stitch ‎all the way through when using the conductive thread to avoid creating any shorts in the ‎circuit.‎

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‎‎4 Add the battery and switch.‎

In the locations we have indicated in the image, we passed the thread through to the back ‎panel to continue the circuit on the back. As shown, the thread from the side marked + ‎‎(positive) should be connected to the side of the battery also marked + (positive), and the ‎same for the sides marked - (negative).‎

On one side (we chose positive), add the switch along a straight length of stitches.‎

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