Free software and fashion tech

At Libre Graphics Meeting 2015 in Toronto, Hong Phuc Dang presented an update of the state of various projects from the free-software and open-hardware world that deal with garment design and manufacturing, as well as textiles in general. The scope of the topic is rather large; it encompasses everything from Arduino-driven knitting machines to producing one-off garments for cosplayers to developing software for fashion designers. Thus, there are a great many small projects that are active in different areas, with the potential to grow into a full-fledged community.

Dang credited Susan Spencer's presentation at LGM 2013 with jump-starting her interest in free software for working with garments and textiles. After that session, she started researching the current state of affairs—talking to fashion designers and students around Asia and Europe, as well as to developers and people in the garment-production business.

In brief, she said, she learned that the fashion industry is and long has been slow to adopt new technology. The modern sewing machine is virtually identical in function to the earliest Singer models from the 1850s. Newer machines are faster, and some can be computer controlled, but they do not offer much else in the way of new capabilities. One of the key reasons for this is that garment manufacturing revolves around notoriously cheap labor. When labor is so inexpensive, producers have no incentive to pay more for newer equipment.

This pits fashion producers into a "race to the bottom" price war, she said, leaving little room to invest in new technology. As a result, the software used even by the largest producers is of low quality. Several designers told Dang that they used CAD drafting software to work on their designs because they cannot find anything else usable in their price range. What software is available is, naturally, proprietary and is locked to closed data formats.

At the same time, she said, there are other problems plaguing the industry that also have an impact on technology. As more garment production moves to third-world countries to save costs, first-world communities begin to lose their collective traditional knowledge. Mass production also means that consumers have grown used to generic, one-size-fits-all garments as the norm, even though technology should allow for fast and easy customization—or perhaps even direct collaboration between the designer and the consumer. And mass production generates significant amounts of waste and environmental pollution.

The drawbacks to mass production of garments are reminiscent of the types of problem that the "maker" movement has already tackled for a number of engineering disciplines. Dang believes free software, open hardware, and open data formats can overcome many of these drawbacks, so she has been working to foster connections within the community. Her community-building project is called Fashiontec, and it includes a GitHub organization in addition to the main site.

There are several active free-software projects worth looking at, she said. Design and patternmaking are the purview of Tau Meta Tau Physica, Valentina, and several independent Processing-based efforts. A related project is BodyApps, which provides a 3D body-measurement system. It is developed by members of the Fashiontec community.

While the patternmaking projects focus on cutting and sewing material, there are also several knitting applications in development. Dang cited Knitic and All Yarns Are Beautiful (AYAB) as among the best; there is a more complete list available at the Fashiontec GitHub site. Related projects include Embroidermodder, an open-source application that can control several programmable embroidery machines.

Most of these knitting projects focus on supporting commercially available hardware devices. On the open-hardware side, there are several projects dedicated to building knitting machines. The most well-known of these is OpenKnit, which uses an Arduino to drive a home-built machine that includes a number of 3D-printed specialty parts. There is also an open-hardware embroidery machine built and documented by members of the OpenBuilds project. Some Fashiontec members are also working on reverse engineering a circular knitting machine.

Last but not least, the Fashiontec community has also been working to define an open file format that can facilitate data sharing between applications. Called the Human Definition Format (HDF), it is a container format modeled after The Document Foundation's Open Document Format (ODF). It contains structured XML and binary images, and can already be used with Valentina.

Together, these projects constitute an active development scene, but Dang ended her session with a reminder that more is still needed. There are many more hardware devices that need to be "liberated" through reverse-engineering so that they can be used with free software. Individuals still face obstacles to setting up their own maker-style businesses. Some of those obstacles are quite large—such as how to compete with the global-scale distribution channels available to mass-production companies. Dang said she is still researching approaches to that problem.

Other challenges are smaller, such as the difficulty of building custom hardware (such as the open-hardware knitting machine). Here, Dang said that the Fashiontec community is trying to reach out more to the maker movement—hacker spaces in particular, which she said could all benefit from adding a sewing or knitting machine to their stable of 3D printers and laser cutters.

Over the coming year, Fashiontec will have a presence at a number of events, including MeshCon in Berlin this October, as well as FOSDEM, FOSSASIA, and several other free-software conferences. Dang closed by saying anyone with an interest in textiles, knitting, or garment production is welcome to join the community.

[The author would like to thank Libre Graphics Meeting for assistance with travel to Toronto.]