Materials 

• Big(36″ x 36″) and small(12″ x 12′) felt sheets – polyester and wool
• Wool roving rolls
• Feltworks replacement needles and multi-needle / embroidery needles and threads
• An Embroidery hoop
• A sponge or a felting mat – it helps smooth needle-punching works into your base fabric
• Pins
• Cotton
• An Iron and a thin fabric scrap
• Iron-On Adhesive
• Poppers and conductive threads
• A solder
• Hot glue gun
• Conductive ink and stencil sponges
• A table lamp
• Foam sheets
• Hook wires
• A plier

– You can buy materials for fletwork at Michael’s and Amazon. (Tip: If you joinMichael’s membership, it will send you discount coupons)

Sketch

• how to build circuit and put all layers together

Ddesign Execution 

• Cut felt into 12 circles to make faces. With a felt needle ( there are different needles: coarse and fine) make patterns you want. Tip: keep poking!

This is the video of how I did felt work.

[TIP: When you cannot find certain colors in wool or polyester felt, don’t worry. You can add wool on other felts and needle it to make your own color. (Example: scared face with green color and Lonely face with violet below)]

If you use polyester felt, be careful to use iron because iron heat will melt polyester felt. I knew iron heat melts it, but made this mark on Happy face. You need a thin fabric scrap and out it between iron and your felt to iron.

• I learned how to blanket stitch through This video. It’s easy to follow.

• [Embroidery threads and needles] let’s do blanket stitch. I used an embroidery hoop and pins to hold face onto top layer while stitching, which made work so much easier and fun!!

• Aligned faces with the circle.
• [Cotton puff] – Don’t finish blanket stitch!! Have to add cotton stuff to fill faces. THEN complete stitching!

• With felt scraps. Made the seat for the kid in the middle of the mat. I used iron-on adhesive in order to put all the scraps together onto the top layer. It was way faster than stitching. [TIP: Use a cotton fabric scrap when ironing felt. If you use polyester felt, you MUST use a cotton fabric sheet to iron. If not, iron will burn your felt]

the top layer final

Process of Making Circuit

• Sewed male poppers onto the fabric and soldered hook wires to female poppers

• sewed hook wires connected from the board to the circuit to fix the wires onto fabric, in order for the users to make fold and unfold the play mat easier.

PROBLEMS

I found the FIRST problem when testing sounds as Jane, Charles and Wes pointed out when the group feedback: on the underbelly of the project, the wiring and mechanics. 

Connectivity between under faces and poppers was unstable when people pushed faces because of popper’s location. I changed the popper position from the circle border to the center in order to enhance pressure sensors.

Used hot glue to hold wires in the fabric as a circuit. This wouldn’t aesthetically look good (future iterative: improvement necessary), but it anchored wires better in the fabric and it was better for usability.  Previously I said, it was uneasy to fix wires onto the circuit fabric with sewing because they twisted and moved.  

The SECOND problem was sound. Some sounds didn’t work, after connecting wires to the board and poppers. After investigating the circuit, I found the culprit of the issue. It was that wires touched each other, hindering inputs from flowing through wires. I used hookup wires for five faces and standard household wires for seven out of twelve faces. I found that faces with standard household wires connected to the board didn’t work, but with hookup wires did. Therefor, I separated each wire and fix each of them on the circuit with hot glue.

I tried to build a couple of circuits with conductive ink, conductive fabric and threads. But They didn’t work. The problem was the wiring underneath of the play mat. Due to the seat, when the kid sits on the seat, he cannot hear certain sounds that he is sitting and pressing buttons at the same time.

• Wired each line to the board. Connected each wire to each signal on the board.

• Made a pocket for the board not to move around the underneath of the play mat. It allows me to fold and unfold the play mat without worries about what if all the wires and the board are tangled.

Later I unstitched the left side of the pocket to make a hole for ON / OFF switch and speaker / headphone jack to reach to power sources.

• [Iron-on adhesive and iron] In order to glue the circuit to the bottom layer, I used iron-on adhesive and an iron.

• [feltwork title] I printed and cut out the title and then used it to needle wool on the top layer which made my work look neat. [TIP] You could make different patterns as well as typography, which give you a lot of opportunities to create different designs.

Finalization 

TOP layer

CIRCUIT

CUSHION

Narrative in emotional vocabulary

I selected 12 emotions out of 15 and Daniel J Edwards, a musical and voice actor in Pokemon(XY), Yu-Gi-Oh(Zexal Arc V) and Psychic School Wars (TBA 2016), recorded this script.

I Feel Many Different Things During the Day

1. When I tickle my daddy (daddy laughing) in the morning, I feel SILLY. When do you feel SILLY?
2. Before I eat breakfast (growling/rumbling), I feel HUNGRY. When do you feel HUNGRY
3. When I hear a loud noise, (door banging) I feel SURPRISED. When do you feel SURPRISED?
4. I feel HAPPY, (music playing) when I hear music. When do you feel HAPPY?
5.  When someone takes away my bucket(/toy) (“GIVE THAT BACK!!”) I feel MAD! When do you feel MAD?
6. When a dog comes running after me (dog barking), I feel SCARED! When do you feel SCARED?
7. When my friend cries (sob sob), I feel SAD. When you do feel SAD?
8. When I help put my toys away (toy sounds), I feel GREAT. When do you feel GREAT?
9. When my mommy is on the phone (phone ringing “uhum, uhmm”) I feel LONELY. What do you feel LONELY?
10. When I think about what I want to be (“Oh oh oh!!” (something find)), I feel EXCITED. When do you EXCITEDfeel?
11.  When grandpa visits (muack muack), I feel SPECIAL. When do you feel SPECIAL?
12. When I hide behind the couch (shh~~~), I feel SNEAKY. When do you feel SNEAKY?
13. When I hit my sister (“Hey stop it!” (annoyed)), I feel SORRY. When do you feel SORRY?
14. At the end of the day (YAAAWN), I feel TIRED. When do you feel TIRED?
15. When I see garbage on the floor, I feel DISGUSTED. When do you feel DISGUSTED?

Sanie’s feedbacks from Artisan Tech

Hi Binna!

your process is really well illustrated, detailed, and executed from start to finish. As a product, it works well aesthetically and catches the attention of children and adults alike. The pattern in the center is especially well done, and your care and handling of technique really comes through. Even your considerations for the childrens’ safety is spot on. 

My only question is how did you come up with the sounds and the emotions for the faces (did you record/create them or take them from somewhere)? It seems that the voice recordings are a bit too detailed and might not be relatable to all children – is there any variation in the phrases?  –

Overall amazing and beautiful work!

Q – It seems that the voice recordings are a bit too detailed and might not be relatable to all children / is there any variation in the phrases?  

– My answer: a vocabulary of feeling words on the play mat should be detailed moments for kids to grasp and further use them. Hence, I got the ideas of narratives from daily life where kids generally experience.

 I agree with what Sanie pointed out. I believe that the twelve audios with limited stories in each emotion could limit kids to fully understand and related to each situation.

I need to add more contexts for kids to perceive feeling words in accordance with meaning of behavior, contextualizing behavior, and consequences of behavior.