Assignment 4: Yarn

Assignments and Final Project

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For this assignment you will make a yarn that consists of two or more different materials. You should make at least 2 yards of yarn.

Create a page that documents your project. Your page should contain pictures, including one or more microscopic close-ups and one or more regular photos of the yarn. The USB microscope will be attached to the Mac computer in our lab. Write a paragraph or two that describes how your yarn was made and justifies your choice of materials.

Measure and report the following properties (if they are relevant for your yarn):

diameter (micrometers)
total length of yarn (meters or yards)
ply
fiber length (millimeters)
twist direction
twist (turns per inch)
conductivity (ohms per centimeter or ohms per inch)

Bonus points for measuring any of the following properties and explaining how you did so:

denier or tex
yarn size
tenacity
elongation
elastic recovery
absorbency

Sample Student Work

These samples are presented courtesy of the students and used with permission.

Conductive Spinning

Conductive Vine Yarn

Digital Quipu

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By Dawn Wendell

Three yarns made for this assignment. (Final yarn in the foreground.)

I made yarn! Well, actually, I made 3 yarns, but I will only discuss my final yarn in detail.

The final yarn

My final yarn is a two-ply wool-steel blend. One of the plies is wool-only and the other is a mixture of conductive steel fibers and wool. The plies were spun using a drop-spindle and then plied by hand. The yarn was not soaked in hot water, so the twist isn’t set and its not quite a “finished” yarn. However, I am happy with it! My goal was to learn to spin, and by spinning both a normal wool ply and a wool-steel blend, I was able to experiment with the difference between spinning natural and man-made fibers. Also, I was hoping to make a conductive yarn but I wasn’t sure how much steel I needed to spin into the yarn for that. Luckily the amount of steel I added to the second ply was enough to have good conductance over the whole 2 meter yarn.

The steel fibers didn’t integrate very well with the wool even though I was trying to combine them evenly while spinning.

Close-up pictures of the yarn show the conductive steel fibers running through the second ply.

Yarn Specifications

The following properties of the yarn were measured:

Properties	Measurements
Diameter	2-5 mm
Total yarn length	2.03 m
Ply	2
Fiber length	95 mm
Twist direction	S-twist
Twist	3-4 turns/inch
Conductivity	1 ohm/inch

Extra Credit Measurements: Tex

I also measured the tex of the yarn. First I weighed the yarn I made. Then I converted its weight into a weight (in grams) per length (meters), which was 2.365 grams/meter. Since tex is the weight of 1000 meters of yarn, I multiplied 2.365 by 1000 to find that the tex of my yarn is 2,365.

Thoughts, Improvements, Suggestions

Spinning is HARD – This video makes it look easy!
theartofmegan. “Spinning Yarn on a Drop Spindle – Tutorial.” YouTube. May 13, 2008. Accessed December 2, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXTWgMeMgI
It takes a lot of patience and coordination to do correctly. However, I think this assignment was good because 2 yards was a reasonable amount to make, not too much, not too little.
The metal fibers seem soft at first, but the definitely “shed” more, so little bits of metal ended up all around where I was spinning. Also, I found that I couldn’t run my hand along the roving as tightly with the steel because it was more prickly than the wool when being held tightly.
Plying magnifies any inconsistencies in your tension from spinning. Luckily art yarns are very pretty! :-)

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By Xiao Xiao

Stretchy, electrically insulated, textured.

Idea

Because conductive yarns short themselves out easily if when not carefully used, I wanted to create a yarn that’s insulated on the outside. I took inspiration from normal insulated wire and tried to create the yarn version of an outside sheath with conductive thread running in the middle. I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that yarns can be stretchy to add some elasticity to my yarn.

A coil of the Conductive Vine yarn.

Construction

In my personal yarn collection, I had a roll of Cascade Fixation, a cotton-elatic blend, which had a fair amount of stretch. I used this yarn to construct a narrow tube using the i-cord technique with size 3 needles. Since I used thin needles and a tight knitting technique, my resulting product had tight stitching and no visible holes.

The yarn and needles used for this assignment.

After knitting my i-cord tube, I thread a length of 4-ply conductive thread through the center of the tube. I stretched the tube with the thread inside so that I’ll have enough non-stretchy core for when the outside is fully stretched. Finally, I tied off the two ends of the conductive thread to the ends of the outside tube to prevent slipping.

Specs

Diameter: 5556 micrometers
Length: 2.25 yards, 3.04 years stretched
Ply: 2 for Cascade Fixation
Fiber Length: 18 mm for Cascade Fixation
Twist Direction: N/A for my yarn, S for Cascade Fixation
Twist: N/A for my yarn, 16 turns/inch for Cascade Fixation
Conductivity: 1.4 Ohms/Inch

Another view of the Conductive Vine yarn.

Notes

I was happy with how the yarn turned out. I also like how the variated Cascade Fixation gave my yarn a gentle gradient between light and dark green. If I were to do this again, I would use even small-sized needles to knit the tube because sometimes the extra conductive yarn on the inside peeks out a little bit when the yarn is in relaxed position.

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By Rizal Muslimin

Digital Quipu: inspiration and design. (Left image (c) Mary Frame, from “Ancient Cloth…Ancient Code?” All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons license. For more information, see http://ocw.mit.edu/fairuse.)

My yarn is highly inspired by Quipu, an ancient counting devices from the Inca Empire in which knotted string act as a number for record keeping and record communication purposes (census record, state storehouse inventories, etc). This project is essentially transforming the analog ‘quipu’ into a digital ‘quipu’ by substituting the knot with the PCB and the cord with conductive and non-conductive yarn. Here, the size is scaled up to three times than the original intention [9 mm in diameter].

Specification

In this 2 yards digital quipu, there are 12 yarns ‘knotted’ with 18 PCB’s with the rules: 1 -> 5 and 5 -> 1 to create a triangular composition. The rules can later be parameterized with other types of rhythm or composition (a-b-a-b / a-a-b-b / a-a-a-b, etc).

Sequence of photos showing wool and cotton yarn plus small masonite triangles for the PCB, and the 1->5 / 5->1 yarn pattern.

Design elements of digital quipu.

Close up view of the yarn.

Total Diameter: 3 cm in triangular shape
Total length: 1.825 meters .
Wool fiber length: ~300 millimeters | twist direction: Z - 3 turns per inch | diameter: 3000 ~ 5000
Cotton fiber length: ~300 millimeters | twist direction: S ~2 turns per inch | diameter : 5.5 sts to 1 In
PCB: 4.19 cm2 | 3 for Positive Pin, 3 for Negative Pin, and 6 for MOSI, MISO, RESET and SCK pins

Special thanks to Ayu for helping me out.

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Special Topics: New Textiles