Background

Hand spinning yarn has been a necessity to make cloth for thousands of years - first by hand, then with simple tools like (drop) spindles, then with a variety of spinning wheels. All three processes have the constant involvement of the hands in the process. In the Netherlands there was a lot of spinning being done on spinning wheels, mainly for the commercial sector, and this work was done almost exclusively by women. Until about 1800, hand spinning was a vital part of urban linen and cloth (mainly woolen blankets) industry in the Netherlands.¹ The wool industry in Leiden is shown in the painting below by Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg from between 1594 and 1596.

Then the industrial revolution came with the invention of spinning machines like the spinning jenny, which signaled the end of hand spinning as a viable profession, also in the Netherlands. This is demonstrated by what J.A.P.G. Boot writes in Textielhistorische Bijdragen 26 about hand spinning in the eastern Netherlands at the beginning of the 19th century: ‘As more spinning mills came into operation, hand spinning on spinning wheels had to decline, until eventually only very old spinsters managed to make a living from it for an extremely meager wage. With them, hand spinning died out.’²

Interestingly, with the arrival of the spinning machines, spinning metamorphosed from a woman’s job done at home (or on a ship, which is where the spinning wheel ‘het schippertje’ gets it’s name from) into a man’s job done in a factory hall.³ I can’t help but think about the first computer programmers who were also women, until men found out that programming was important precision work. I found Jackie M. Blount’s perspective on the shift in the public’s perception of spinsters interesting:

Jackie M. Blount calls spinsters “gender transgressors,” women who managed to find lives of independence and autonomy in their work as educators. Hired because of their singleness, not despite it, spinsters were at first considered “high-minded, upstanding pillars of the community” and eventually became cultural icons. But when social hygiene and the study of sexuality came into vogue at the turn of the twentieth century, spinsters came under fire. Suspected of lesbianism and accused of suppressing frustrated sexuality, Blount writes, spinsters were increasingly viewed as “standing outside their conventional gender roles as procreating women.” Admiration turned into villainization as women were forced to defend their single status in a workplace that once welcomed them.⁴

The negative connotation to the word spinster lingers to this day, as it’s still colloquially used to describe an unmarried woman who is too old to marry; a woman who no one wanted (or who herself wanted no one?) so she kept spinning to make a living.

Since then, hand spinning has seen some revivals throughout the years. I’ve been told by spinners at spinning circles that in the seventies, spinning had a huge rise in popularity as a hobby. When I was at the LSD (the Landelijke Spin Dag obviously) in october, I observed that the general audience was almost exclusively women, and that many seem to be over sixty. I joined the Landelijke Spingroep to learn how spinning is spread throughout the Netherlands nowadays, so I could visit the LSD and to find spinning circles to join. I visited the spinning circle in Amsterdam and in Oosternijkerk. I met people who were spinning since the seventies and spinners who just started, in a wide range of ages (although generally I was on the younger side).

Referenecs

1. On https://www.brabantserfgoed.nl/page/7909/handspinnen
2. J.A.P.G. Boot, ‘Handspinnen van katoen en handkatoenspinnerijen (deel 2)’, in: Textielhistorische Bijdragen 26 (1986), 42-43
3. On https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/lint011gesc03_01/lint011gesc03_01_0002.php
4. On https://daily.jstor.org/original-spin-history-spinster/

What are suitable materials and spinning techniques to make crafted sensors?

Looking back on my spinning process over the past months, I’ve learned a lot about a variety of non-conductive and conductive fibers, how to prepare them for spinning consistently and how to best process them into woven and knitted sensors that work reliably for interactive textile interfaces. In this part, I’m elaborating on my material research, fiber preparation and spinning techniques suitable for spinning sensors.

Material research

Conductive materials

For the conductive materials to spin with, I looked into two categories - fibers and wires. Although spinning techniques can also be applied to existing (conductive) yarns, it’s my goal to make my own yarns starting from the fiber. However, I read in my favorite spinning book (The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson) that if you need a strong material that will not be (very) noticeable in the final yarn, it may as well be commercial yarn, and I think I can get behind that (and over my purist intentions).

I am also applying this view to 100% conductive wires and filaments, because it doesn’t really add to my research to make fully conductive threads myself, especially if they are going to be hidden. I also think there is value in wrapping handspun yarn in thin conductive wires - like my favorite yarn from Bart & Francis. The research of spinning with conductive wire is only a small part of the project; the focus is on conductive fibers.

Fibers

I settled on the following conductive fibers to research:

• Stainless steel fibers - 110mm variocut, 8 micron, bulk (Immatec, mixed directions)
• Stainless steel fibers - 110mm variocut, 12 micron, sliver (Immatec, combed)
• Crimped conductive fibers (Shieldex)
• Steel wool 00000 for sanding
• Conductive wool - stainless steel fibers and merino wool mix (Bart & Francis)

In the end, I did not use the steel/wool mix from Bart & Francis, since I wanted to compare only 100% conductive fiber options and do the blending with non-conductive fibers myself. On the first image, steel wool at the top, then 8 micron mixed direction stainless steel, then the 12 micron aligned fibers. On the right, the (way thinner) crimped fibers.

Wire

To look into spinning with commercial conductive wire, I got the following two options:

• Uncoated 0,1mm copper wire
• Monofilament thin stainless steel wire

I only used the copper wire since it worked very well (both in spinning and in the resulting resistance/capacitance ranges) and it would make comparing the spun yarns easier if there was only type of wire used.

Beads

I also saw some spinning techniques which used beads, that I wanted to try out, so I bought a bunch of metal beads online (at an Aliexpress shop which no longer exists) in various sizes.

• Round, 5mm with 3mm diameter hole
• Round, 2mm with 1mm diameter hole
• Disc, 5mm with 2mm diameter hole

I did not use the disc shaped beads after I learned that the 5mm beads were too thick to be knitted.

Coatings

Finally, I looked at a bunch of coating options, but since these are more finishes and not necessarily part of spinning, I’m leaving them out of this research. They also tend to be pretty expensive, messy and sometimes even hazardous.

• Paints
• Bare Conductive paint
• Chip Quik conductive paint
• Silver conductive paint
• Glues
  • DIY graphite powder based conductive glue
  • Liquid tape from Performix
• Sprays
  • Graphite spray
• Electroplating

Non-conductive (insulating)

All of my non-conductive fibers have been sourced from markets (mostly the Weversmarkt in Hoorn), Marktplaats and Bart & Francis (the ones from Bart & Francis I already had, I did not buy new fibers there). These fibers basically formed the carrier and gave the hand spun yarn their characters. I got the following materials:

• Alpaca - dutch alpaca wool bought on Marktplaats (I came to regret this later as described above)
• Sheep - all kinds of combed top and carded batts from various breeds of mainly dutch sheep (such as solognote, herdwick, zwartbles, merino etc). I also got some unwashed sheep wool (I think zwartbles but I’m not sure) from a spinner I met on Schiermonnikoog which I haven’t spun yet
• Silk - I fell in love with sari silk, which is silk fibers from shredded sari fabric. I bought it at markets. I also had some leftover dark blue silk fibers (‘haspelzijde’) from Bart & Francis
• Banana - very smooth, silky fibers sourced from banana from the Weversmarkt
• Cotton - unbleached cotton fibers from Bart & Francis
• Flax - I found a bag of flax top in a second hand store in Haarlem
• Acrylic - firestar effect fibers and a white/green blend from Bart & Francis

Fiber preparation

The biggest thing I’ve learned in this project is that fiber preparation is everything. I’ve taken it into account already in my project proposal, but I did not really account for it as much as I should have. Good fiber selection and good fiber preparation make a yarn pleasant to spin, and even more importantly, distribute the conductive materials evenly along the combed top or carded batt. I’ll discuss fiber sourcing, carding and combing here.

Sourcing fiber Two mistakes I made in the beginning of my project was to buy unwashed, unpicked and uncarded alpaca wool (first mistake) on Marktplaats (second mistake) sorted in two different qualities (A and B, mostly relating to fiber length) and 3 different colors. Since I had experience with the raw material already I figured it would be a beautiful (to the eye and to the touch), nice to work with and inexpensive starting point, but it ended up costing me way more time than I anticipated in washing (and waiting for it to dry) and carding it by hand. I learned that it’s better to spend a bit more money on fibers that have already been washed and carded (and dyed) and are ready for use.

The second lesson is that when buying raw (non-conductive) materials, you need to feel and see them first - this became very obvious when I went to the weversmarkt in Hoorn. Every sheep/alpaca/plant fiber is different and seeing and touching the material is essential before buying. I got the alpaca from Marktplaats shipped to my house, and then I realized both how much I had bought, how short the fibers were, and how many thick prickly hairs (kemp) there were. You can see this clearly in the yarn I made with the B quality fiber, there are a lot of fibers poking out and it’s very prickly.

The sourcing process for conductive fiber happened online only, since conductive materials are not very common in markets or shops, apart from copper wire (electronics stores) and steel wool for sanding and cleaning (hardware stores). Steel fibers are mostly found on websites of the companies producing them, and you usually have to e-mail them or fill in a form to get a quote. They are mainly sold to other businesses, and are only available in small sample quantities for high prices or in large quantities. As a small individual textile designer, this is not very convenient, but I still managed to get some different conductive fibers to do my research with from the french company Immatec (through e-mail) and the german company Shieldex (through their sample webshop).

Tools

I’ve used a variety of tools for this project: some donated, some bought, some made and some borrowed, that I’ll introduce below.

• First of all, the star of the project: a spinning wheel (a scotch tension Louet S10 donated by Marina van der Velden, the mother of my neighbour to whom I am very, very very grateful :) ). On top you can mount the skeinwinder to wind freshly spun yarn into skeins.

  

• Hand carders: one coarse pair that came with the spinning wheel, another 72 TPI pair bought at GF Carders and some chopsticks to make rolags. Here are the coarse carders:

  

• Blending board (108 TPI):

  

• Wool combs (made myself using a 66% scaled down version of this print using 3.1 mm nails since wool combs are ridiculously expensive) and a diz with twist saver (made myself by printing this file):

  

• Louet drumcarder (I visited the textile workshop where I used to work at Utrecht University of the Arts multiple times to make use of their drum carder):

  

• Treadle weaving loom (made use of one at the Weefacademie Sytze Roos)

  

• Domestic knitting machine (a fine gauge machine I already owned; a coarse gauge machine I made use of at Utrecht University of the Arts)

  

Carding and combing fibers This project is as much about spinning as it is about carding. How you prepare your fiber accounts for a third of how it’s going to spin, the other thirds going to the actual fiber you use and the spinning itself.

For the sake of this project, I bought hand carders (72 TPI which means teeth per inch; this is a nice jack of all trades for carding various fiber types) and a blending board (108 TPI). I did not buy a drum carder, because they are pretty expensive and bulky. However, when I bought the blending board, I thought that I could use them for mixing in conductive fibers evenly, but that really didn’t work and it’s not what they are for. I also hoped that I could use them to card raw wool. However, blending boards are for blending clean, combed or carded fibers and designing fiber arrangements with, not for actually blending and mixing fibers. I learned that that is not really what I was looking for: I primarily wanted to mix the conductive fibers very well to distribute conductivity throughout the resulting yarn. The rolags and batts I made with the blending board had the different fibers used distinctly visible. I do think that the blending board can come in handy when designing yarn with a combination of carded conductive and non-conductive blends, but I didn’t use it a lot during the research. Looking back at the first sensors I spun using the blending board, I like that the colors are less mixed, and I think I can make yarn with better technical properties with the carding knowledge that I have now.

Hand carding is a lovely process of lightly brushing two carding brushes loaded with fiber over each other, to straighten and fluff up the fibers. The resulting batt is not very large and doesn’t produce a lot of yarn, but it’s just enough for a swatch. I used the hand carders quite often in this project. You can roll up the fiber into a neat roll called a rolag, which is used in long draw spinning. With hand carding it’s important to not overload the carder, otherwise carding is harder and drafting from the resulting rolag is harder. Below you can see rolags made from alpaca wool and conductive fibers in various ratios.

Drum carding - carding fibers with a hand-cranked machine with two rollers with carding cloth - is my favorite process and I ended up doing most of my fiber preparation like this, simply because it works the best and fastest. With an 80 gram batt from a full averagely sized drum carder like the Louet Drumcarder Standard that I used mainly, you can spin multiple hanks of yarn of different types to compare and make multiple sensor swatches with the same batt, or spin a lot of yarn of the same type for a larger sensor swatch. I do not own a drum carder as they’re pretty expensive, but I was able to make use of the one at HKU, close to my studio in Utrecht.

I also made wool combs, since I tried this fiber preparation process during a workshop I followed by Gregor Falkenhagen from Men at Wool and found that the resulting combed top is very evenly mixed, which is what I wanted. The problem is that it takes very long, and it produces a lot of waste. In the end I preferred carding the same batt multiple times for better consistency over combing small amounts of wool, because I found that the distribution of conductive fibers in batts (carded well) was already good enough to detect useful resistance and capacitance ranges in the resulting yarn. Combing worked a little too well, and the resulting yarn was smooth but a little one dimensional in my opinion. With carding, you have more design freedom.

The problem with carding a batt multiple times though is that again, it takes a long time, and if I didn’t carefully distribute the conductive fiber they can still stick together too much. To learn how to better card, I followed a workshop on art yarn spinning and carding by Bregje Konings, where I learned how to improve this process. By sandwiching the conductive fibers in between regular wool, you have more control about the placement and separation of the conductive fibers. I tried this on Bregje’s drum carders, first making an art batt with a huge amount of different colors and fibers (90 gram of silk, merino, mohair, wensleydale…) and a small amount of crimped stainless steel fibers (2 gram). The in-between white layers are combed mohair to make the yarn really cloudy. The next batt is again with a variety of fibers (72 grams of gotland curls, shetland, merino, bluefaced leicester, black and grey bamboo, pink sari silk, white firestar and copper christmas decoration to name a few) and 5 grams of 12 micron aligned stainless steel; here I compared carding once versus twice:

By pulling the conductive fibers apart to make a bit of a spider web and then sandwich that, you get a pretty even distribution. With this technique, carding just once is enough which is way faster; this way the fibers are less blended but this can be pretty nice visually.

These were the first batts after the session with Bregje:

Still, carding the following 8 batts took about 5 hours, so it’s by no means a quick process.

The fastest method of fiber preparation is when I’m spinning straight from non-conductive fiber and plying it with copper wire. In that case, it’s more about the spinning technique to make the yarn interesting. When spinning yarn with copper wire, the yarn is a bit more stiff and you can notice the thin copper wire. This can be used as a design feature though.

Another option where no fiber preparation needs to be done is to spin 100% conductive fibers (works best with the combed top variant), spin 100% wool, and ply the two together. This only works as a capacitive touch sensor, because it will be super conductive.

Suitable materials

Conductive fibers review While working with the 8 micron conductive fibers (the mixed direction ones) I noticed that they love to tangle together and form clumps during the (hand) carding process already. Carding them separately beforehand can help a little bit but not significantly. Blending them with other fibers directly on the blending board is not too easy but okay if it’s not too much at once, but it still clumps and tangles while spinning; it feels like they’re felted together. I ended up not using this material after the first few samples since it was too frustrating to spin and I couldn’t get it to be blended evenly. Even when I was spinning just the conductive fiber, it resulted in very uneven yarn.

I then continued with the 12 micron aligned conductive fibers that looked more like combed top and where way more manageable to process. The crimped fibers from Shieldex are also very nice, as they are way thinner and very springy and glittery, which makes the yarn glitter a little. They are very conductive but easy to blend since they’re so thin.

Steel wool for sanding purposes is not stainless, which in hindsight makes sense. This resulted in rusting yarn. I put this yarn in the same bath as some other yarn with stainless steel, and they ended up having a few rust spots as well. I noticed the rust was getting worse when the yarn was drying up, so I’m curious to see if it will stabilize.

Insulating fibers review When I started the project, I already knew I didn’t want to work with raw sheep wool, since I know how long the washing can take and how nasty the lanolin and dirt is. The focus of the project is on spinning, not on the entire wool preparation process. I did however get raw alpaca wool, since I used it before and knew that the cleaning process was less messy, since alpacas don’t have lanolin in their coat. They do take dust baths however, and I think the alpacas that I got the coats from loved those, because the wool was very dusty. I also noticed that there was big differences in quality between alpacas - some had coats with a lot of kemp and others had very short fibers only, so it was pretty frustrating to work with. I ended up spending hours on cleaning, carding and trying to make it work for me, but you can really see the struggle in the yarn. After I went to the weversmarkt in Hoorn I only got washed and precarded fiber which was way better.

In my spinning process, I decided to focus on wool as the main insulating fiber. This is because they are the most commonly found in the Netherlands, available in a large variety, and are largely from local animals. On top of that, they are also very nice to spin. For the plant-based fibers, different preparation processes are sometimes needed (like heckling for flax), and since my fiber blending research is focused on carding and combing, this would not make sense. Furthermore, finer fibers like cotton need carders with way more teeth per inch (TPI) than I had. I also think it makes sense to limit the amount of non-conductive fiber types to make it easier to compare things like fiber ratios and spinning techniques. I did however use other fibers like silk, banana and acrylic fibers in small quantities as effect fibers for visual and tactile purposes.

Spinning techniques

I’ve explored many different techniques during this projects. They can be categorized roughly as:

• singles
• 2 ply yarn & variations
• 3 ply chain plied yarn
• core & coreless core yarn
• beaded yarn
• technical yarn
• art yarn

Singles are the easiest and fastest to spin, since they only require one spinning step. If they’re going to be used as singles, they should not be overly twisted. The resulting yarn is pretty fuzzy and soft, and less strong than when a plying step is added. Sensors knitted or woven with single ply yarn tend to wear faster (pilling, fuzz) so I think they are less suitable for repeated interaction.

I’ve spun a lot of classic 2 ply yarn from the same yarn as a sort of baseline. This image demonstrates the difference in yarn dimension in singles versus 2 ply versus 3 ply yarn. Singles are pretty smooth, 3 ply yarn gives a more rounded, soft look whereas 2 ply has a bit of difference in dimension.

Here I used the same batt to compare 3 ply chain plied yarn with 2 ply bullion yarn. The nice thing about chain plying is that you can spin it from one single with a finger crochet style of plying, instead of having to prepare three separate singles. Chain plying forms little bumps where the loops are formed, but that’s not very noticeable usually.

The bullion yarn forms beautiful details on the knitted sensor - however, it’s on the back of the knit.

Beaded yarn takes a long time to spin, and while the result is nice, it doesn’t really work for variable resistance since the conductive path needs to be created by having the beads touch. For a touch sensor it can work though, if you want to use each single bead as a touch input, you could. As a bigger electrode it doesn’t really work, but that could be done by stringing the beads on or plying with conductive yarn.

Archive: knitted and woven swatches

To convert the spun yarn into touch sensors, I knitted and wove most spun yarn into swatches. Most of the sensors are knitted instead of woven, since knit gives more opportunity for interaction because it’s stretchy by nature. This means that the knitted swatches can be used for touch, stretch, pressure, squeeze or other interactions, whereas woven sensors are more suited for just touch and pressure.

To document and compare all of these different sensors, I made an archive documenting their composition, spinning technique and processing technique, as well as technological properties that are relevant for me as an interactive textile designer: resistance and capacitance.

I wanted to be able to take off the swatches easily, since I like to repurpose e-textile swatches from time to time. I have a general electronic textiles repository that keeps changing shape as I take out swatches to use in new interactive projects. To me, an archive is most valuable when it’s in active use and ever evolving, although I also like archives for their visual appeal and educational purposes. The idea with this archive is that I can keep adding more yarn and swatches to it by making the scroll longer (even after the deadline for this project), so it’s never done, always a snapshot.

This is the current collection of sensors in the archive:

Swatch tester

I made a swatch tester to accompany the sensor archive: a variable resistance and capacitance visualizer with a small piece of an addressable LED strip that changes color based on the change in resistance or capacitance (depending on which side it’s clipped to). There is also a knob to change the sensitivity of the variable resistance side (the voltage division), since some sensors have a larger or smaller resistance range than others (i.e. some range from 100k-500k, other from 20k-50k etc.). This doesn’t show the actual resistance or capacitance, but for this you can simply use a multimeter. You can clip it wherever you want, and the resistance range will be different: if you pick two points closer to each other, the resistance range will be lower and smaller. Usually, I clip them a bit below the top left and a bit above the bottom right. For the capacitance visualization, you just need to clip the single alligator clip somewhere to the swatch. You can interact with the swatch by:

• pressing
• stretching
• squeezing

Here is the first iteration tested on a woven sensor:

And here the finished tester:

Comparing the variable resistance and capacitance from the various sensors, I learned that:

• There are not really big differences between a yarn like a 2 ply and a 2 ply variation in resistance
• Not necessarily something new, but the bigger the distance between the measuring points (the distance between the two analog alligator clips, or the distance from the touch to the capacitance alligator clip), the lower the resistance or capacitance. To me, clear, linear ranges between 1k and
• The more evenly carded the fibers are, the clearer the resistance range
• The more conductive fibers there are, the less clear the the capacitance range. If the sensor is very conductive, it’s better to just use it as a touch detection sensor instead

I can’t really say much about the ideal ratio of conductive fibers to insulating fibers, because I changed too many parameters between yarns: I tested various types of fibers, types of spinning techniques and fiber preparation methods. Another variable is me: as the project progressed, I got better at fiber preparation and spinning itself.

What defines a contemporary artisan?

This experiment is about where design and craft meet - I want to explicitly develop myself as not only a textile designer but also as a craftsperson - or as an ‘artisan’ - in the context of this experiment. This is something that is underexposed in the Dutch context: the projects in the field of craft in the Dutch design sector are usually about the collaboration between designers and craftspeople, and less often about the artistic and craft development of someone who is both. There is nothing wrong with a cross-disciplinary approach, but it is precisely when someone has the technical & embodied knowledge of how a material works that this knowledge can be used in an enriched and informed design practice. The focus of this experiment is to investigate whether hand spinning can become relevant again in a design context: hand spinning currently does not play a major role in textile design.

The definition of an artisan is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past months. From a language point of view, it’s interesting to note that the word artisan does not have a dutch translation: we have the word ‘artisanaal’ to describe artisanal products, but other than that it’s translated to ‘ambachtsman’ or ‘kunstenaar’. From a legal point of view, the word artisan (or artisanal) doesn’t mean anything in the Netherlands, since it’s not a protected term. I looked in this database and there is not one creative/craft occupation that is regulated, protected or requires a diploma of any kind. So if you want to call yourself a craftsperson or an artisan, you can; no one can legally stop you.

Throughout this project, I’ve engaged with many spinners at spinning circles, workshops, and markets. Most spin as a hobby, though a few do so professionally, often combining spinning with related activities like teaching workshops or running wool-related businesses. Many craftspeople in textiles are hybrid: apart from practicing their craft they educate, run a business around crafts and facilitate, or do research in academic environments.

According to Gregor, a craftsperson is a professional. You don’t have to commit to a craft fulltime but you should take yourself seriously in your craft. When you craft just as a hobby, the ability (‘het kunnen’) is less important as there is no one that you have to do it for but yourself; it’s more about the enjoyment of the act of the craft. When you use your craft daily and you use it to make (part of) a living, you approach your craft from a different perspective than when there is nothing really at stake. This urgency of the craft is essential. Still, amateur craftspeople can be just as skillful and creative as professional artisans. There are many people (especially many women) who have done (textile) crafts their entire lives and who are extremely skillful at it.

What is then the difference between an artisan and a craftsperson? I would describe it as two people taking themselves seriously in their craft and developing themselves to enhance their craft, but whereas the artisan uses their craft as a creative expression - to design - a craftsperson does not necessarily do so. In my conversation with Gregor, he expressed the difference as craftspeople take traditional knowledge and bring it to life, not so much moving boundaries but making the most beautiful things based on tradition, whereas an artisan creates their own processes (and may take more freedom in the craft), but still base their work on traditional craft knowledge.

The Wikipedia definition of an artisan as someone who ‘practices a craft and may through experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist’ feels outdated to me. To me, artisans and artists are on the same level, where artisans often work in decorative arts, while artists lean toward fine arts. Unlike artisans, artists don’t always need technical skill and may focus more on the message than craft, sometimes relying on craftspeople to execute their vision.

To summarize, some definitions and distinctions:

• Craftsperson - someone who skillfully practices a craft
• Artisan - a craftsperson who uses their medium to create art and design, inspired by the (traditional) craft itself in a contemporary way
• Artist - someone with a drive to convey a message or tell stories with what they make
• Designer - someone who designs functional objects/applied arts, a blend of commercial intent and creative expression
• Hobbyist/amateur - someone who practices a craft for fun at any level of skill

Can you approach e-textiles in the same way to become an e-textile artisan?

A contemporary artisan then is someone who is technically skilled at a craft, takes themselves seriously in its practice by trying to improve continuously, and explores the medium creatively. A contemporary artisan uses their craft expressively but also professionally: there needs to be a certain urgency, it’s both part of their life and their livelihood. An artisan is in a constant dance with the material, trying to balance what they want and what the material wants; being in control but also understanding constraints.

With this definition of what it means to be an artisan, I would say you can approach e-textiles in the same way to become an e-textile artisan - you can apply these same parameters to someone who makes electronic textiles. When the electronic textiles are skillfully crafted by someone with technical, expressive and technological skills, I think you can move from a textile artisan to an e-textile artisan. In that case, I’m an aspiring e-textile artisan - working on developing my craft to use it in creative expressions.

What makes a crafted sensor artisanal?

This question relates to the distinction made earlier between a craftsperson and an artisan - crafted versus artisanal. A crafted sensor becomes artisanal when the sensor is made with a certain expressive intention. In this case, the spinner takes control to shape the yarn while listening to the material.

The physical results of this project that are exploring the applied textile design requirements, are

• the Sensor Spinster swatch archive with resistance and capacitance tester
• the woven work consisting of multiple handspun sensors
• and the knitted work

All three take the shape of a ‘pronkrol’ (roughly translated as roll to show off): a scroll on a big spool that historically was used by young women to demonstrate their mastery of various textile crafts. I wanted to present the three physical outcomes as these showpieces that demonstrate skill (hopefully) and a lot of work. As described on the Amsterdam Museum website:

Unrolled, it was visible to everyone what kind of handicraft skills the girl had. A show scroll served as proof of her proficiency.

With the gesture of unrolling the scroll to reveal I’m revealing my artisanal and technical research. I’m linking to artisanal skill and (historical, but still perceived) domesticity of textile crafts; taking textile crafts seriously and showing off (pronken) with what I’ve made, and in the case of the archive, how I’ve improved. The scrolls double as musical interfaces - when you explore them, they make sound.

The knitted interface can be stretched; as you stretch harder, other sensors are activated too.

What requirements must an artisanal sensor meet to be considered applied textile design?

In my view, an artisanal sensor has to serve a function (hence, applied): it shouldn’t be purely decorative or nice to look at, it should be made with tactile interaction in mind. This means that the tactile experience and interaction should be designed. The archive of sensor swatches is just as much an exploration of the technological properties as it is of the tactile properties of handspun yarn and various spinning techniques: a long draw backward spun alpaca sensor has a very different feel than a very controlled, short draw forward spun crêpe yarn. It’s material-driven design exploration, which resulted in two tactile musical interfaces.

What are then requirements for an artisanal sensor?

Technical requirements

• Should be able to handle repeated touch, i.e. handle frictions and stress. Generally, worsted spun yarns are stronger and can handle more repeated use whereas woolen spun yarns tend to pill a little after repeated stress.
• Conductive fibers/materials should be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the batt

Technological requirements

Variable resistance sensors:

• Should not be too dense - when the yarn is very dense, it’s harder to get a good contrast in conductivity, which makes it less useful for a variable resistance based sensor

Capacitance based sensors:

• Should be conductive enough throughout the yarn and resulting knitted or woven sensor, so it’s touch can be detected as far away from the measure point as possible (or as wanted)

Machine processing constraints

Knitting on a domestic knitting machine:

• If the yarn is to be processed on a domestic knitting machine, it should not be too thick. If it’s thicker than about 5mm, it’s very hard to knit it even on a coarse knitting machine, especially when it’s dense. When using beaded yarn, the beads have to be less than 4mm thick, otherwise they do not fit through the orifice of the knitting machine carriage. I used 5mm thick beads, and they did not fit.
• Fine gauge knitting machine is really not suitable for thicker yarns - this is something that I should’ve thought about beforehand since it’s pretty logical. I only have a fine gauge knitting machine, and although I looked into getting a coarse knitter on Marktplaats, they tend to be way more expensive than fine gauge machines. Luckily I could make use of a coarse knitting machine at my previous workplace.
• I used mainly stitch size 7-10 on the coarse knitter using all needles. When knitting with handspun yarn, making swatches is essential to figure out the correct stitch size to make the yarn shine. I only made one swatch for each yarn and decided on the stitch size based on my intuition (i.e. my experience with knitting). This worked out okay-ish, but resulted in some swatches being too stiff and others beingt too open. When a swatch is too stiff, sometimes the special features of the yarn is completely hidden within the stitches, which is a shame. With more time and more yarn I could have made more tests, but I had neither.

Weaving on a floor loom:

• When weaving with conductive yarns in the weft, you can basically use any thickness. However, if the warp is too dense, you may end up covering up a lot of the yarn, so the warp should leave enough room for the yarn to shine. You can see that the warp in this weave is allowing the thick contrasting yarn to pop through, although the warp could have been less dominant:

  

Design requirements

• Interesting to the touch and to the eye
• The features of the yarn should not disappear into the yarn processing, i.e. the yarn should have room to shine
• The resulting sensor should have an application

What is the added value of handspun compared to industrially manufactured yarn for a rich visual and haptic experience of a tactile sensor?

This question is to answer: why bother with all of this? Is it better?

Before Sensor Spinster, I’ve knitted and woven plenty of tactile interfaces using the same machines as I am using in this project. What I can conclude from this research project, is that handspun yarn gives more control of the technical, tactile and visual properties of the resulting fabric than industrially manufactured yarn. With handspun yarn, you don’t need to ‘hide behind’ interesting weaving or knitting techniques; the yarn can stand by itself. Industrially produced yarns are less exciting in themselves so you rely more on their processing, whereas with handspun the thread is sufficient and decisive for the final fabric. Industrial yarn can also provide rich haptic experiences, but it depends on other yarns that are more pleasant to the touch.

Industrially made yarn can be made at a larger scale, faster and cheaper, and can be processed with equally industrial machines; I think you can create beautiful things with industrially manufactured yarn. My initial expectations were that handspun yarn would be less consistent and linear than industrial yarn, and I had some fears that this experiment would show that hand spinning yarn would prove to be way more time consuming for worse technical results. What I noticed however, was that my sensors were pretty reliable; the readings were more linear and predictable than similar swatches where commercial conductive yarn was knitted together with woolen yarn.

With commercial industrial conductive yarn, it’s also a matter of picking the right one for your purposes and picking a yarn that works well as the ‘carrier’, the yarn that gives the sensor it’s visual and tactile appeal, since most industrial conductive yarn is very thin and (often a bit bland). Just like when starting from the fiber, it’s all about how you blend them, but you have less control over this blend as the two yarns knitted or woven together are not actually mixed with each other. This is noticeable not just in the technical properties of the resulting sensor, but also visually: you can usually see the individual threads laying next to each other. While it’s not always very obvious, I tend to look closely at the materials and it bothers me. You can see it clearly in this fabric I knitted with three yarns with similar thickness.

Industrially manufactured conductive yarn is mainly made for this industrial processing, which means it has to be quite thin and consistent in thickness, which are great achievements, but these qualities are not what I am looking for in yarn for more hands-on processing. When the yarn is this thin and consistent, it tends to blend into the fabric - you don’t see the yarn itself so much as more the fabric as a whole. When you’re only working with industrial conductive yarn itself (without a more funky carrier yarn), then you need more specialized industrial machines (or very small knitting needles), or accept that the fabric will be more of an open knit. You can still weave them, but the resulting fabric will be pretty one-dimensional. Unless of course you take the focus away from the individual yarn and focus on special weaving or knitting techniques to create texture and depth. Below you can see an example of a plain knitted sensor with a rare commercial yarn that is thicker and less ‘industrial’ (my favorite yarn from Bart & Francis).

Applied contexts

An interesting outcome of this experiment is that a well carded batt already works beautifully as a soft and fluffy pressure sensor. I experimented with this in a project called bromwol - a collaboration between Dianne Verdonk, Roald van Dillewijn and me, where we explore textiles as musical interfaces. We presented bromwol as an interactive exhibition and performance with the soft digital instruments during U? festival on November 9 2024. In this process video, you can see carded wool from Sensor Spinster being used as musical instruments.

Some of the carded batts and rolags that are used as sensors by themselves here have been spun into yarn and then knitted into a stretch sensor after the performance and exhibition. I like that parts of the Sensor Spinster process were able to take on different shapes along the way, providing different ways of interacting with the different stages of conductive wool processing. This recontextualization shows the potential of not just spinning but carding as well in an interactive and performative context. This wouldn’t have been possible without the following of the different steps from fiber to sensor.

While trying out different soft sensor shapes during bromwol, I also found out that the spun yarn by itself can already function as a touch, squeeze or pressure sensor in the shape of a hank, so before processing into a woven or knitted sensor. You can see and hear this in the video above too (at 1:09).

What this demonstrates is that the embodied experience of the all of the steps in the spinning craft process can inform and influence a design process beautifully. To me, bromwol is a proof of my hypothesis that as textile designer and artisan simultaneously, the craft and design practice enrich each other.

Reflection

I like to call myself a sensor spinster now. I don’t have the hours yet to call myself a master, but I definitely have the obsession to constantly work on my skills to be both in control and in symbiosis with my materials and my spinning wheel. I am approaching the fiber, yarn and processing from an expressive, technical and technological point of view, aspiring to be an electronic textile artisan.

The next steps are to actually apply my woven and knitted musical instruments into their intended context: an exhibition. After this experiment, looking for ways to show and continue my research are my next steps.