Creating Furniture-Scale Deployable Objects with a Computer-Controlled Sewing Machine
| Sapna Tayal | Lea Albaugh | James McCann | Scott E. Hudson |
Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2025)
We introduce a novel method for fabricating functional flat-to-shape objects using a large computer-controlled sewing machine (11 ft / 3.4m wide), a process that is both rapid and scalable beyond the machine’s sewable area. Flat-to-shape deployable objects can allow for quick and easy need-based activation, but the selective flexibility required can involve complex fabrication or tedious assembly. In our method, we sandwich rigid form-defining materials, such as plywood and acrylic, between layers of fabric. The sewing process secures these layers together, creating soft hinges between the rigid inserts which allow the object to transition smoothly into its three-dimensional functional form with little post-processing.
Sapna Tayal, Lea Albaugh, James McCann, Scott E. Hudson (2025). Creating Furniture-Scale Deployable Objects with a Computer-Controlled Sewing Machine. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
@inproceedings{10.1145/3706598.3713735,
author = {Sapna Tayal and Lea Albaugh and James McCann and Scott E. Hudson},
title = {Creating Furniture-Scale Deployable Objects with a Computer-Controlled Sewing Machine},
year = {2025},
isbn = {9798400713941},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713735},
doi = {10.1145/3706598.3713735},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
articleno = {438},
numpages = {15},
keywords = {Computational fabrication, textiles, CNC sewing, furniture},
series = {CHI '25},
}
