#conductivethread

Pros:

Flexible

Easily get sewn on soft materials, such as fabric and clothing

Lightweight and tiny components are easily integrated into soft materials, such as fabric and clothing

Wearable in everyday situations

Cheap manufacturing

Provide more possibility for artwork creation and fashion industry

Cons:

This way of soft-circuit making rely heavily on manual sewing

Time-consuming

Challenging to sew the circuit together with the electronic components with thread by using a sewing machine.

Machine washing may damage the conductive thread

Since conductive thread is uninsulated, it behaves like a bare wire, so we probably need some fabric glue to protect the thread before putting it into washing machine.

Otherwise, we can remove battery and hand wash the product with care, but it is too troublesome.

Loose threads may cause short circuit

The LED is not triggered when I turned on the battery at first because negative and positive side is connected together.

I have made a LED dress using LilyPad Arduino before. There was a time the thread from the positive side accidentally touches the negative side and cause a short circuit, it ended up burning a hole in the dress lol

To avoid short circuit, I use sellotape and hot glue to glue the tip of the thread.

Need carefully design the circuit map before sewing

No overlapping stitches are accepted

Cannot cut the thread with the sewing goes wrong, otherwise the circuit is disconnected

Loose connection

Conductive thread may pull away from the sew tab and disconnect the circuit when the thread is not making a tight connection.