Codebug Critter Costumes
Introduction
Making a costume for your CodeBug is easy and fun. You will choose a template, cut it out of felt and sew it together. Afterwards you can program your bug to match your costume.
Choosing different colours of felt that go well together will make your bug stand out from the crowd. You can use sticky-back felt for the add on pieces if you don’t fancy sewing them all on! You can also use sticky-back googly eyes to make your costume come alive.
CodeBug | ||||
Felt | ||||
Thread | ||||
Needle | ||||
Scissors |
Printing your template
Print out the owl, reindeer, star, bauble, pumpkin or ghost costume template sheet. If you are feeling adventurous you could even try to design your own costume, just make sure there’s enough room to fit CodeBug inside and that you leave a square hole for the LED display (17mm x 17mm).
Be careful
Make sure you turn print scaling off when printing your template. The templates must be printed in landscape. You can check your template is printed to the correct size by measuring the 1cm test square on the template page.Cutting out the costume
Cut out all the pieces for your costume from the template paper. Be careful when cutting out the centre square.
Once you have cut out your template pieces, lay them on top of your felt and cut around them.
Sewing your costume
If you are using sticky-back felt and googly eyes for your decorative pieces, stick them on after you have sewn the body of your costume.
If you are using regular felt for your feature pieces (wings, eyes, beak), you will need to sew these on before sewing the main body.
Lay out your felt features on top of the front body piece of your costume (the one with the square hole). Make sure you don’t cover up the hole for the LED grid and you should leave a space around the edge of the front body piece for sewing to the back body piece.
Take some thread and tie a double knot in one end, then thread the other end through your sewing needle. Hold one of the feature pieces to the body front and then push the needle up through the two pieces from the underside of the front body piece (not the decorative side). Pull the thread through until the knot and then push the needle down through the two layers a little distance along the edge of the piece. Repeat this around the whole edge of the piece, then tie a knot on the underside of the body front and cut off the remaining thread.
Repeat this for each felt feature piece.
Lay your body front piece (with the decorative side up) on top of your body back piece.
If you want to power your CodeBug using USB then you will leave need to leave a gap at the top of the costume by making two stitch lines as shown below in the owl on the right.
Tie a double knot in your thread and thread your needle again. Hold the two body pieces together and push the needle through the back piece from the inside of the body to the outside, near the bottom of the costume (make sure you leave enough room to slide in CodeBug by placing it). Pull the thread through until the knot, then push the needle up through the two layers a little distance along the edge of the piece. Repeat this around the whole edge of the body, then tie a knot on the underside of the body front and cut off the remaining thread.
Then slide CodeBug into your costume.
Powering by battery
CodeBug can be powered by battery so you can take it wherever you want! To power CodeBug by battery, first unplug the Micro-USB cable, do not worry as CodeBug will remember your program without being plugged in. Now slide in a coin battery (CR2032) with the positive (plus symbol) side up. Your program will begin running again!
Adding a badge clip
You can turn your CodeBug critter into a badge with a sticky-back clip. Simply stick it to the back of your costume or cut out a rectangular hole in the back of your costume and stick the clip to CodeBug and push it through the hole.
What next?
Think up a CodeBug project that goes with your new costume and create it.
Try designing your own costumes and share them online!