Hi my name is Lee Jones and I am presenting the paper “Learning with Stitch Samplers:
Exploring Stitch Samplers as Contextual Instructions for E-textile Tutorials”.
This was work completed during my PhD at Carleton University under the supervision of Audrey
Girouard.
I work in the field of electronic textiles or e-textiles, which is a field that repurposes
the conductive properties of certain threads and combines this with increasingly small
computers.
E-textiles are exciting for many reasons, but one of them is that it enables us to incorporate
textile culture into computing.
For example, we could imagine someone hand stitching a computational device, and this
brings new tools, skills, and applications to computing.
When we look at hand-crafting e-textiles, hand sewing is the most common technique used
especially in educational settings, and this combines two different skill sets.
There is the tacit skill of stitching with a needle and thread.
For example, knowing how to use a needle as well as different stitching techniques.
And then there’s the physical computing knowledge - such as how to make circuits that
work.
Within HCI and creativity support tools for e-textiles, the focus is on the second - and
there are tools to, for example, confirm that a planned stitching design will have components
in the right location with the correct polarity.
But there is a lack of tools to support the first skill set - that of tacit skills such
as stitching, and successful systems are dependent on both.
For example, if someone makes a stitched design with components in the correct location and
polarity orientation, but makes loose stitches and therefore loose connections, the design
will fail.
So in this work we try to explore how to integrate these two skill sets, and do so by looking
to how textile stitching techniques are taught and honing in on the design artifact of stitch
samplers.
Traditionally, stitching was taught by repeating the techniques of someone else’s physical
stitch sampler.
Stitch samplers or embroidery samplers were tangible references that were used for learning,
practicing, and demonstrating stitching techniques.
Stitch samplers were often made by individuals who had mastered a technique to then be copied
by students and then repeated for practice.
What makes samplers unique compared to other embroidered objects is that they were a practice
space for performing and demonstrating many different techniques on a single piece of
fabric.
Individuals usually had several samplers for different techniques, such as one for alphabet
and numbers, like the one presented here from the late 1700s.
These samplers were then used to demonstrate mastery of needlework, and could be used to
teach others the same stitching techniques.
Here’s another example of a sampler from the late 1700s, this time for darning, that
shows different stitching techniques for mending holes in a garment.
An individual would repeat the steps from someone else’s sampler to learn how to mend
their own garment and then this would also be used for reference later on.
In our previous work we explored how individuals teach these same techniques today.
We found that visible mending educators still use physical samples of their work, with for
example different colours of threads used to show each stitch, and we reported on the
teaching techniques that they used to teach these tacit skills.
Then we translated these same techniques for e-textiles, to create an e-darning sampler
for mending.
But this sampler, stitched by hand, isn’t scalable so we wanted to explore how can we
share these techniques more broadly, and make them accessible.
In this paper we explored the concept of printed stitch samplers on fabric - a trend we call
modern stitch samplers to differentiate them from their hand-stitched predecessors.
Commercially, stitch samplers with printed guides and instructions on fabric are sold
to help individuals learn embroidery techniques without an instructor.
Samplers also help individuals learn the tangible and tacit skills that are often difficult
to convey and are used to guide individuals through the process.
We then used these same design techniques to inform the design of our e-textile stitch
sampler.
Our overall research question for this project was : ‘How should we design practice samplers
to help individuals practice the tacit skill of stitching while learning how to make e-textile
patterns?’
To do so we ran three studies to inform our recommendations on e-textile samplers.
I’ll go over the highlights.
In the first study we interviewed individuals who design modern stitch samplers with printed
guides.
Overall, our stitch sampler designers described stitch samplers as a way to take printed patterns
from books and other materials and reproduce them in place.
These stitch samplers supported novices because it gave them a pattern to start from, rather
than having students chalk and mark one out beforehand.
Because they are designed as practice projects, rather than final-end projects, they are a
good introduction to stitching for those who have not stitched before, but can also be
used for more advanced stitchers who want to learn new techniques.
Finally, students would like samplers to be even more visual with added guides and videos.
Based on these initial interviews, we hypothesized that stitch samplers would be a useful way
of guiding e-textile novices through initial exercises – to translate stitching references
and instructions onto the fabric they would use for practice.
Printing on fabric is an inexpensive way for educators to provide instructions and reference
material for students.
For our study, we used a commercial print-on-demand fabric supplier.
We uploaded our file and then ordered several meters of sampler fabric that we then cut
up into rectangles approximately 8.5”x11” (which then became less than 1 USD per sampler).
We designed this initial sampler using the same techniques as the designers used in their
modern stitch samplers.
For this beginner e-textile sampler, the five activities on the sampler included: (1) how
to use running stitch to make traces, (2) how to use satin stitch to secure printed
circuit board (PCB) component through-holes, (3) the design of a simple circuit, (4) the
design of a parallel circuit, and (5) the design of a simple circuit with switch.
To evaluate this e-textile stitch sampler, and during the pandemic - for study 2 we did
contactless drop-off deliveries, and then watched as folks completed them through zoom
using a think-aloud protocol.
Designs that worked: Our participants said that the sampler was useful for gradually
learning the techniques and progressing from practice stitches to then applying them to
making circuits.
The numbered activities and alphabetized steps not only helped to guide individuals through
those steps but also helped with communication between the researcher and participant, which
would be especially useful for distance learning settings.
The polarity icons helped individuals create their circuits and self-correct polarity errors.
Designs that need to be changed: Overall, the sampler concept needed to be explained,
i.e. that stitch lines are guides.
Whereas modern stitch samplers introduced new stitches throughout the sampler, with
e-samplers the components and terminology need to be introduced at the beginning.
Also, while stitch samplers might include many stitching techniques and activities on
one sampler, our participants recommended that more space was needed for e-samplers
and that each activity needed its own sampler “page”.
After testing the samplers out with novices, we wanted to interview educators to better
understand how they teach e-textiles and the opportunities and limitations of samplers
within their courses.
The pandemic has given e-textile educators a unique time to reflect on e-textiles and
how to teach them in a distance learning setting where teacher and student are not co-located
in the same place.
Our interviews with e-textile educators uncover some of the potential benefits as well as
limitations of e-textile samplers.
The benefits include debugging at a distance where the sampler could help with communication
and troubleshooting for specific activities.
The ability to illustrate one’s own samplers, and to design samplers that scaffold the specific
needs of their students depending on how they are approaching e-textiles.
Our educators used a wide variety of e-textile toolkits to keep costs down and recommended
that component design illustrations needed to be toolkit agnostic so that they could
work with any toolkit.
From these three studies we provide the following recommendations for e-samplers, and you can
find more details on each in our paper:
1: Include practice space.
2: One activity per sampler.
3: Treat the sampler as reference notes and describe each activity.
4: Introduce components all at once at the beginning.
5: Use toolkit agnostic symbols when possible.
6: Include numerical and alphabetised steps and terminology.
Overall stitch samplers are a financially accessible, and locally reproducible, method
of providing in-place e-textile tutorials.
Ours cost approximately $1USD per sampler page, and print-on-demand fabric suppliers
are available around the world.
For researchers without suppliers nearby, these techniques are also reproducible with
DIY screen-printing methods.
We provide our design files in our supplementary files, and hope e-textile researchers and
educators can remix them for use in their own workshops and courses.
Thanks for watching!