Fire Pixie will be performing at the NCC ISES gala event on Tuesday. I’m spending this week working on accessories and light-up costumes, getting everything ready. We’ll have 6 fantastic performers showing off all the LED costumes I can squeeze onto the dance floor. I can’t wait!
Today I tried my hand at fiber optics for the first time. I’ve used light pipe and LEDs extensively, but have been inspired by some of the fiber optic costumes I’ve seen online recently, mostly by Natalie Walsh, creator of the fiber optic dress that’s been going kinda viral in the LED wearables world.
I had a set of Fiberflies that I bought a while back from Flowtoys. They’re a super fun little toy but I never, ever use them (especially now that I’ve got some Genesis Poi and a couple of Phoenix hoops, YES I am a spoiled, spoiled light dancer). I decided to repurpose them into a costume.
Since this was my first fiber optic project I wanted to keep it simple, so I made a belly dance hip scarf. It’s a simple half-circle of fabric with ties in the front. I had some leftover sequin fabric from my Belly Dance fans project, and I used five neopixels, and a trinket from Adafruit.com.
I cut the fibers to length and secured them to the LEDs with few zip ties and a metric ton of hot glue. I don’t know how well this will hold up — I’ll need to take it dancing for a good solid test-run. It’s a really simple design but really really effective, especially combined with some other costume pieces.
Hopefully we’ll get a few great photos on Tuesday night at the gala! Fiber optics are wicked hard to photograph.
HI Erin, when you say 5 neopixils, is that 5 meters? Also what size trinket did you utilize? Thank you.
This project just used 5 individual pixels (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1260) with bunches of fiber optics covering each one. And nowadays I would probably use a Trinket M0 or a QT Py from Adafruit.