Friendship Gloves are a pair of gloves that will help you harness the power of the mighty “High Five” between two pals to bring forth light in the darkness! (Briefly.)
Skills required: hand-sewing (rudimentary) and soldering (also rudimentary)
materials:
-gloves (should be two of the same side, or one reversible pair)
-2 3V coin batteries
-soldering iron
-copper tape
-conductive thread
-thin wire
-8 LEDs
-8 resistors (I used 39ohm)
-scrap fabric and regular old non-conductive thread
-needle large enough to thread your wire through (if it’s very blunt and you use knit gloves, you can do your sewing while wearing the gloves! which is weird, but convenient)
-glue gun
-heat shrink tubing
STEP ONE: BATTERY POCKET
Cut a piece of your scrap fabric just large enough to fit your battery and sew it to the top of your glove, as far down on the wrist as possible. Leave one side open so you can remove your battery as needed.
STEP 2:GET YOUR BATTERY SORTED
Cut a small piece of copper tape about the length of your battery. Strip a small piece of insulation from your wire to connect to the tape. If you have multiple colors, you can choose one for all your negative and one for positive. In my case, I chose yellow for negative.
Hold the wire to the tape with an alligator clip and solder it in place.
Peel the backing from the copper tape and stick it to the negative terminal of the battery. Optional but recommended (especially if you have some weak-sauce wire like I did): protect your connection with a nice glob of hot glue! Now tuck the battery into your handy pocket for safekeeping.
STEP 3: NEGATIVE STRIP
Thread the wire coming from the battery onto your large needle. Using a running stitch, make a couple of stitches up and to the right from the battery pocket as shown:
Cut about 2 inches of copper tape and get ready to solder the wire to the far right end.
Ta-da! Now you’re going to solder another four wires to the strip, one for each finger. Five inches each will be plenty, as you’ll be trimming them later. Lay the tape on the glove and figure out how you need to align each wire to its respective finger before you solder them.
(there is a 5th wire in this picture but go ahead and ignore it)
Insulate each connection with hot glue. Now pin it in place. At this point you can thread each wire a couple stitches up from the strip. Then forget about it for a minute because we’re moving on to the positive strip.
STEP 4: POSITIVE STRIP
First you need to cut a strip of copper tape just like the first one. Cut 5 more wires (in your other color if you have it), this time about 3 inches long. Solder them to the tape like before, but this time start the fingers all the way from the right and add the 5th wire extending horizontally from the left end of the tape as pictured.
Now that both strips are done, you can peel off the backing and stick them in place on the back of the glove if you want, or just keep them pinned for now.
(here’s about where the placement should be)
STEP 5: YOUR BATTERY IS NOT QUITE SORTED YET
Solder a wire (same color as your positive strip if that’s what you’re doing) to another short bit of copper tape and attach it to the positive terminal of your battery.
Sew the wire to the left with a running stitch, heading over to the palm side of the glove.
(ignore the pocket on this side- that was a mistake)
STEP 6: SWITCH IT UP
Expose about half an inch of the wire from your positive terminal. Fold it over to make a loop.
Get our your conductive thread and cut off a generous piece of it. Don’t worry about making it too long, it’s better than being too short. Tie one end of the thread to the wire loop. Cover the connection with a bit of heat shrink tubing to protect it.
Now you’re going to sew in the switch. Thread your needle with the other end of the conductive thread. Using a running stitch, stitch up along the left side of the palm. I made a kind of spiral shape, but all that really matters is that the thread travels along the meat of the palm where contact will be made during your high five.
When you’re done with the first side of the switch, tie off your thread on the inside of the glove and cut it. I made a little x as well, but again, this isn’t necessary.
For the other end of the switch, start with a new piece of conductive thread and sew a similar shape on the right side of the palm. You should end up on the upper right side.
Wow, you’re almost done!!!! …with the switch.
Turn back to the other side of the glove. Thread the wire coming from the far left of your positive strip onto your needle and run a couple stitches around to the palm side.
Just like you did before, make a loop of exposed wire at the end and tie the conductive thread onto it. (NOTE: make sure you put your heat shrink tubing onto either the thread or the wire BEFORE you tie them together. Follow this for all your other connections!)
Great job on the switch! But the most important part is still to come…
STEP 7: THE LEDS
You’re going to start with the negative leads. First get out one of your resistors. Starting with the yellow wire of your pinky finger, clip if down to the appropriate length and then expose enough wire to splice it to the resistor. Thread your heat shrink on to the wire, twist the wire around the end of your resistor, and solder. Then heat up your heat shrink.
Strip off at least an inch of a new wire, and clip it off. Use this to splice the other side of your resistor to the negative lead of your LED. (Remember- you should have the heat shrink on first.) Solder the connection, then slide the heat shrink tubing over it and heat.
Now the for the positive lead! Stitch the green (or whatever color you’re using) wire up the pinky finger. Expose the end of the wire, then splice and solder to the positive lead of the LED.
Here’s how it might look:
Take a moment to check your connection. Touch the ends of an alligator clip to both sides of your switch. If all your connections are good, the LED will light.
If so, GREAT JOB! Repeat this process on the other 3 fingers, checking your connections each time.
HOLY JEEZ!!! Now you’re done- with the first glove.
Time to repeat steps 1-7 on your second glove (OR for added efficiency, you could have been doing both at the same time. I probably should have done this.)
Everything on the second glove will be the same (because you should be using 2 right-handed or 2 left-handed gloves!) except for ONE IMPORTANT DETAIL- make the sides of the second switch horizontal instead of vertical, like so:
This is how the switch works- bridging the gap between each end of the switch completes both circuits and will allow all of your LEDs to turn on.
Split your pair of Friendship Gloves with a cohort and get to high fiving!
(note: I don’t have footage of this phenomenon because in a tragic and very clichéd disaster, my dog ended up gnawing on one of my gloves when I brought them home over the weekend. Clichés come from an all too real place, especially when your dog is very uncool.)
Related
