This tutorial demonstrates how to make a homemade EL wire costumes by showing how the glowing wire is stitched into any clothing. A help along the way is provided by the use of Daft Punk suit as the EL wire can be used to illuminate just about anything, as shown in the images below, not to mention the cheap price of the EL wire.

For EL wire installation, some types of clothing are better-suited than others. When the stiffness of the wire is similar to the stiffness of the base fabric and the garment does not stretch or flex too much in the areas where the EL wire is installed, it is usually easier to get good results. In most cases, the wire should not be significantly stiffer than the fabric or the drape of the garment will be dominated by the wire. With a lined piece of clothing being, the lining must be opened up gently by gently snipping the stitches in an inner seam.

Similar to the image below, the recommended type of clothing can be any medium to heavyweight fabric that does not stretch, faux fur quilted/padded jackets, leather, thick cotton/polyester blends, non-stretchable velvets, and various forms of imitation leather denim. Those which are not preferred are stretch fabrics and lightweight fabrics.

EL wires possess some limitations which should be noted since the center core of EL wire is made of solid copper which will break due to fatigue damage after repeated bending just like any other solid. By mounting EL on areas that don’t flex as much and using stranded insulated connector wire to join the glowing pieces together inside the garment, the electronics can be made to last longer.

As shown in the image of planning the light layout below, the placement of EL wire are planned with temporary markers such as a sketch on a digital photo of the garment, or stickers, or pieces of strings/pins.

Taking into account the parts that will be hidden behind the fabric, the total length of EL wire needed should be measured. The end of each piece should have at least 2-3 inches added to allow for stripping and soldering the ends. For most applications, high brightness and normal thickness wire is preferred because the thin wire is more fragile although it can be bent into finer shapes. The thick wire is protected by a thicker outer plastic core, as seen below, making it more durable.

To activate the phosphor, a high voltage and high frequency alternating current is used by the EL wire. The low voltage DC power from the battery is converted into a high voltage AC source by an EL driver known as an inverter.