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PLUSH IRRADIATED SIRLOIN

Microcontroller night light illuminates meaty issues. By Rebecca Stern

Photography by Rebecca Stern

Faced with an assignment to make a plush night light, I thought, “Why light?” and brainstormed reasons for a stuffed toy to light up. In a glowworm toy, for instance, the light mimics nature. I’d been reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and this got me thinking about the chain of refrigeration, labor, and irradiation involved in American beef production. So I thought, glowing irradiated meat! I know that irradiated meat doesn’t glow, and neither does toxic waste unless it’s in a cartoon, but plush toys typically represent cartoon characters anyway, so it made sense: Plush Irradiated Sirloin.

1. Prepare the fabric.

I silk-screened my steak illustration onto pink flannel and sewed the pieces together (inside out, so the seams wouldn’t show), leaving a small opening

at the base of each one. (For an excellent primer on silk-screening, check out CRAFT magazine, Volume 01, page 106.) You can also use pre-patterned fabric or use fabric paint to hand-paint the design. Next, I turned them right side out, but left them empty. I had to put the lights inside before I stuffed the plush fiberfill around them!

2. Add the Arduino board. Inside, each steak has two 360° super-bright LEDs wired in series. These have frosted lenses that distribute the light evenly in all directions, making them perfect for the inside of plush toys. Because I wanted the steaks to glow dimmer and brighter periodically, I needed some kind of signal to control the brightness of the lights. The Arduino board, my favorite microcontroller solution lately, supports

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