Burning Man Costume...

= EL wire fun. Shortly after my last post in August, my husband mentioned that a coworker was looking for someone to help him with an EL wire costume. For the old-school crafters out there or those who are not big nerds, EL stands for electroluminescent. Here's the wiki article. Crafting with it is like crafting with glow necklaces except the wire is thinner, more flexible and stays where you bend it too. It also requires a source of electricity to glow. With a cheap switch you can then make it blink at different speeds. Its great fun to wear. It is a bit tricky to manipulate.

I discussed details with my new client and it turned out he had a couple of pieces he had put together the year before but after a weak of sand and sun in Arizona both pieces were a jumble of wires and cloth and had lost any hint of pattern. So I pulled everything apart and got started on remaking them. My client had a Chinese inspired robe that I simply tried to accentuate with the EL wire. I ran the wire around the collar and the bottom hem as well as down both sleeves and around the hem of the sleeve. Finally I added a braided belt. It turned out looking like a EL wizard. Here is a not so great picture:

Unfortunately the pictures in the dark did not come out at all. I'll have to figure out how to take those low, low light level shots next time.

The second piece was a shiny pink button down shirt. it was so thin that the EL wire was completely unsupported,. I added some interfacing to the back and that let me build a pretty cool design on it. Here's the piece in progress:

The design was a riff on the Red Lightening theme camp banner. Here is the original.

For those who haven't heard, Burning Man, is a week-long, crazy, creative dance party in the dessert. San Francisco is home to many attendees and I hope we will get to go next year.