Empowering Sustainable E-Textiles: DIY Biofiber Wet Spinning for Community Material Exploration

Recent research in e-textiles within the HCI community has shown a growing interest in sustainable prototyping to reduce the environmental impact of waste generated during e-textile fabrication. Meanwhile, the textile crafts community is exploring alternative sustainable materials. Despite shared goals, communication, knowledge exchange, and collaboration between these two disciplines remain limited. This work leverages HCI knowledge in open-source wet spinning and biofiber recipes to empower individuals in the textile crafts community to create functional biodegradable yarns for e-textile prototyping at home or in individual textile studios. To better understand their material exploration needs, we hosted a community-engaged workshop. Our findings emphasized the need for user-friendly machine designs, the value of hands-on learning, and the benefits of iterative exploration for examining the design affordances of material temporality. Through these efforts, we aim to promote sustainable making via community engagement and provide more widely available technical tools and curriculum resources for material-driven craft explorations.