Prom Jacket

I wanted to create an outfit that was unique and really embraced my school’s prom theme of “under the stars.” For my jacket, I eventually settled on a design of a black jacket with 6 white stars that would also light up and slowly cycle through colors.

A photograph of the jacket laid out with the starts pinned on to mark their locations.

I foolishly thought that this project would be easy. One major stumbling point was finding a material to make the stars out of. I experimented with woven fabric, non-woven fabric, and a host of thin and thick plastics. None of these created the particular diffused look I wanted from the lights. Eventually I settled on a design that utilized 3 layers of fabric (2 layers of fleece and a top layer of satin) and a 3D printed spacer made of transparent PETG.

A photograph of me testing how well felt diffuses the light for the stars.

A photograph of me sewing a star onto the jacket.

A photo of me testing a star on the jacket.

I made the stars with an embroidery machine to finish the edges. Because my timeline was tight, my mother helped me finish cutting out the stars and hand sewing the last two onto the jacket.

A photographof the completed jacket on a dress form.

A second photograph of the completed jacket on a dress form. The stars are lit up in a different color.

The lights themselves are NeoPixel Jewels from Adafruit. They are controlled by Seeeduino XIAO microcontrollers from Seeed Studio with the Adafruit Neopixel library.

A photo of me wearing the jacket at prom.