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.

Publication:
Empowering Sustainable E-Textiles: DIY Biofiber Wet Spinning for Community Material Exploration
Jingwen Zhu, Megan Wu, Ruth Zhao, Samantha Chang, Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao
ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2025
BEST PICTORIAL HONORABLE MENTION AWARD
PDF | DOI

Project Credits:
Hybrid Body Lab at Cornell University, directed by Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao
Research Team: Jingwen Zhu (Lead Researcher), Megan Wu, Ruth Zhao, Samantha Chang, Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao (Lab Director)

This project was supported by the College of Human Ecology Engaged Research Seed Grant and Sustainability Research Grant, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability Academic Venture Fund and Knowledge-to-Impact Innovation for Impact Fund, and the CCSS QuIRI Small Grants Program.

To explore how e-textile practitioners could adopt the DIY wet spinning machine, we hosted a pilot and a full-day workshop study. These workshops aimed to engage the textile community and investigate how the machine could integrate sustainable making into e-textile practices.