Hardware
Textiles 101: Fast Fiber Transform
Textiles are everywhere, yet few of us know how they’re made.
This talk aims to give you an overview over the complete transformation from fiber to finished textile. We'll be exploring fiber properties, spinning, and techniques like weaving, knitting, crochet, braiding, and knotting, followed by finishing methods such as dyeing, printing, and embroidery.
You’ll learn why not only fiber but also structure matters, and how to make or hack textiles on your own without relying on fast fashion or industrial tools.
Textiles play an integral part in our daily lives. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re wearing clothes or have some form of fabric within arm’s reach. Yet despite how common and essential textiles are, few of us know how they actually come to be. How do we go from a plant, animal, or synthetic polymer to a fully finished piece of clothing?
This talk unravels the full transformation pipeline of textiles: starting with fibers and their properties, then spinning them into yarn, turning that yarn into textiles through weaving, knitting, crochet, braiding, knotting, and other techniques, and finally finishing them through printing, embroidery, dyeing, or bleaching.
Along the way, you’ll learn why your “100% cotton” garments can feel completely different despite being made of the same fiber, how structure matters just as much as material, and what environmental impact different choices have.
Whether you want to make your own textiles, hack existing ones, or finally understand why that wool sweater you washed too hot is now tiny, this talk is a crash course in most things textile, and a reminder that you don’t need industrial machinery or fast fashion to create something on your own.
Additional information
| Live Stream | https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/ground |
|---|---|
| Type | Talk |
| Language | English |
More sessions
| 12/27/25 |
OpenAutoLab, an open source machine, that is capable of processing contemporary color and black-and-white films for analogue photography, is being presented here. It made its first public appearance at 37C3 and was already seen there in action, but had no organized talk or proper presentation. Now it is better documented, waits to be built by more people and to be further developed by the community. This talk is about motivation behind developing OpenAutoLab and about the technical decisions ...
|
| 12/27/25 |
Like 39C3, the last CCC camp (2023) and congress (38C3) have seen volunteer-driven deployments of legacy ISDN and POTS networks using a mixture of actual legacy telephon tech and custom open source software. This talk explains how this is achieved, and why this work plays an important role in preserving parts of our digital communications heritage.
|
| 12/27/25 |
Building electronics has never been easier, cheaper, or more accessible than the last few years. It's also becoming a precious skill in a world where commercially made electronics are the latest victim of enshittification and vibe coding. And yet, while removing technical and financial barriers to building things, we've not come as far as we should have in removing social barriers. The electronics and engineering industry and the cultures around them are hostile to newcomers and self-taught ...
|
| 12/27/25 |
This project transforms a classic rotary phone into a mobile device. Previous talks have analyzed various aspects of analogue phone technology, such as rotary pulse detection or ringing voltage generation. Now this project helps you get rid of the cable: it equips the classic German FeTAp 611 with battery power and a flyback SMPS based ringing voltage generator - but still maintains the classical look and feel. The talk demonstrates the journey of bridging analog and digital worlds, explaining ...
|
| 12/27/25 |
Despite how widely used the ESP32 is, its Bluetooth stack remains closed source. Let’s dive into the low-level workings of a proprietary Bluetooth peripheral. Whether you are interested in reverse engineering, Bluetooth security, or just enjoy poking at undocumented hardware, this talk may inspire you to dig deeper.
|
| 12/27/25 |
A 595€ wheelchair remote that sends a handful of Bluetooth commands. A 99.99€ app feature that does exactly what the 595€ hardware does. A speed upgrade from 6 to 8.5 km/h locked behind a 99.99€ paywall - because apparently catching the bus is a premium feature. Welcome to the wonderful world of DRM in assistive devices, where already expensive basic mobility costs extra and comes with in-app purchases! And because hackers gonna hack, this just could not be left alone.
|
| 12/27/25 |
With PTP 1588, AES67, and SMPTE 2110, we can transmit synchronous audio and video with sub-millisecond latency over the asynchronous medium Ethernet. But how do you make hundreds of devices agree on the exact same nanosecond on a medium that was never meant to care about time? Precision Time Protocol (IEEE 1588) tries to do just that. It's the invisible backbone of realtime media standards like AES67 and SMPTE 2110, proprietary technologies such as Dante, and even critical systems powering ...
|
