DIY Touch Screen Gloves

15 = Number of gloves that I own

  0 = Number of gloves that work with my iPhone

I live in the north pole and wear gloves for 6 months of the year.  Which I think should sufficiently explain why I own so many gloves.  Except that I have more winter accessories than most people who have lived here all their lives.  Hummmmmm.....

So I thought I would try to DIY my own smart touch gloves.  A quick Google search informed me that I would need some kind of conductive thread/fabric.  Which only seemed to be available online.  Really????  Only online????  C’mon really!!!! Why must every simple plan become sooooo complicated?!?!  Searching a bit more revealed that plain metallic thread may work.  Okay…that’s more my style.  So I found some metallic embroidery floss/thread stuff at Michaels that worked perfectly on my phone’s touch screen for only $2 bucks.  I was feeling pretty good about my plan and had visions of successfully converting all my gloves over to “smart” ones for only $2 bucks!  Genius, right?!?!

Until I started working on my first pair of gloves.  Let’s just say things started to head south pretty quickly.  And not the “I’m going to a tropical climate in the middle of winter” kinda south.  More like the dreaded “I’m getting older and my body parts are sagging” kinda south! 

First off...threading the needle was a b*%@#!!!!  During which time I unfortunately caught the attention of the little bads.  And they still love their strangs!  Needle + thread + kitties = Chaos!

Next, I tried to sew little metallic “pads” on a couple of different gloves, testing out different techniques and seeing what would work best.  Long story short…it took way too much time and was not very successful.  The conductive material still requires my fingers to be the conductor.  So the thread and/or fabric has to be sewn in such a way as to transmit current from the inside of the glove to the outside.  This was challenging to accomplish and resulted in many stab wounds from that bleeping needle.  Ya know...owning a thimble would have really come in handy.

Holy cow!  Did I really just say that..."owning a thimble"?!?  I was never a home ec kinda girl...yet here I am sewing my gloves wishing I owned a thimble!  That's crazytown!

So what's my progress to date on this glove conversion????  Well...I have successfully completed 1 "touch pad" on exactly 1 glove.  And it's not very attractive looking.  So with my most awesome success rate....I quit!  I'm throwing in the towel, or should say gloves, on this brilliant idea.  It's back to the drawing board.  Well...actually...to the mall.

Let me introduce the newest member in my glove family...

Update:

16 = Number of gloves that I own

  1 = Number of gloves that work with my iPhone

I'm sure no one saw that coming.  Ha! Ha!