Just My Imagination

My aunt sent me this cool but too-big shirt:


I used a Sparkfun shirt from Maker Faire and a silk scarf from the thrift store and made it into a dress:


I stitched down the sides of the shirt to make it more triangle-shaped and used the fabric from the sleeves to make it wide enough to be a skirt. I let the extra stick out as a sort of "tail." I traced a shirt that fit me onto the red Sparkfun shirt, cut off the sleeves, stitched down the sides, and attached two pieces of silk scarf to hold it up (they get tied together at the neck). I made a v-neck by wrapping some thread a few times around a few vertical inches at the middle of the neckline. I attached the top and the skirt to make a reasonably functional dress.

My room is terrifically messy.

Woohoo! Pipe cleaners are conductive, sez my lovely multimeter.
Edit: Gasp! It looks like not only are they conductive, but it appears the manufacturing process that wraps the wires around the fiber is precise enough that the two wires that traverse the pipe cleaner are actually electronically insulated from each other.
"Stress tests" (ie. me bending, twisting, and untwisting one for a while) indicate the wires break sooner than the fibers come out enough to cause the two wires to touch.

I guess I don't have to make my own, but I decided to try anyway.

How to Make Pipe Cleaners

Fold a piece of wire in half. Wrap felt roving (fuzzy bits of wool right before the spinning-into-yarn phase) around half of the wire. Twist the two halves of the wire (the fuzz-covered one and the other one) together until you feel they will hold the fibers on. Use scissors to cut the edges so bits of fiber can stick out. You can vary the thickness across the pipe cleaner for different effects.

My first attempt looks a bit like a shrimp.


Second came out more pipe-cleaner-like.

It's so teeny I had to set up the external monitor so that the cursor switches to the other screen when I drag it up rather than to the side. Awww.