Seamless Tech: ‘OriStitch’ Threads Computation and 3D Textiles

By Louis DiPietro

Could a flat piece of fabric hold a 3D shape, the way paper does in origami?

Aiming to find out, researchers from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science developed OriStitch, a new software and fabrication system that takes simple 3D objects – a toy or a teapot, say – and spins them into a design for a textile version using carefully placed stitches in fabric.

This approach is more efficient and accessible than existing machine embroidery – and could be a creative boon for areas such as fashion, architecture and smart textiles, according to researchers.

“Folding fabric into 3D geometries is time-consuming,” said Thijs Roumen, assistant professor of information science at Cornell Tech and senior author of “OriStitch: A Machine Embroidery Workflow to Turn Existing Fabrics into Self-Folding 3D Textiles,” which was presented at the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication on Nov. 21 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Current approaches either rely on manual processes – like in hand-pleating – which is labor-intensive, or advanced machine-based processes.”

Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.