Weaving is an ancient craft that is still practiced as a hobby by many people around the world.
In recent years, it has found new life as more people have returned to hands-on making as a way to slow down, reconnect with materials and step away from screens.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people turned to crafts and DIY hobbies—including sewing, baking and gardening—to support their well-being.
I remember trying to buy a sewing machine in 2021 and finding none available in stores.
More recently, textile crafts have become popular among Gen Z, with so-called “grandma hobbies” such as crochet, knitting and quilting seeing a resurgence. These slow, tactile, screen-free pastimes have become a form of digital detox from screen burnout.
It has also become a social media trend to share handmade projects through #WIP (“work in progress”) posts as part of the cozy “grandmacore” lifestyle aesthetic.
What most hobbyist weavers may not realize, however, is that their craft helped shape modern computing. Today, makers are once again using textiles to imagine the future of technology.
The invention of the Jacquard loom
In 1804, a French weaver named Joseph-Marie Jacquard patented a loom that could weave intricate patterns using punch cards—paper cards with encoded holes.
As the cards pass through the loom, the presence or absence of a hole tells the loom which warp thread to raise or lower, acting as an early form of binary code programming. Weaving that once required a master weaver and an assistant could now be done by craft hobbyists.
This same concept later influenced early computers, inspiring people to see how such a craft could be a source of technological revolution. In the 1830s, Charles Babbage drew directly on Jacquard’s punch-card mechanism by realizing he could apply the same concept to algebraic patterns instead of textiles to program his Analytical Engine.
Mathematician Ada Lovelace advanced his work beyond math to envision programming any information represented by symbols, including musical notes or graphic designs. By doing this, she separated the logical instructions, or software (punch cards), from the hardware (physical machine) for the first time.
User interfaces on websites and mobile apps (also known as graphical user interfaces) evolved from command-line interfaces, which were in turn a revolution over punch cards, their predecessor.
My mother-in-law told me stories about how, as an undergraduate in electrical engineering in the 1960s, she used to write code for programs by punching stacks of cards. I teach undergraduates today about the history of user interfaces and how we have come full circle with digital looms that now create smart e-textiles.
Weaving is still shaping technology
Weaving and other textile crafts are still influencing how people build technology today, often through hobbyists and makers as well as trained engineers.
As a professor of physical computing and e-textiles, I lead a research group that uses a computational weaving machine to create smart fabric using both natural and conductive yarns, in what we call hybrid craft. We prototype future wearables and soft furnishings with sensing and electronic capabilities woven into the threads.
Some of our designs aim to cut down on e-waste using hybrid crafts and digital fabrication. Our most recent work uses computational looms and knitting machines to build fabric-based electronic breadboards designed by and for women in e-textiles. Another recent study used hybrid crafting to make prototyping more inclusive, with a focus on women and people with physical disabilities.
When we run workshops in our community, people are excited to stitch their own e-textile circuits using needles and conductive thread. These experiences show how hands-on STEM outreach and maker culture can bring diverse individuals into technology and give them a role in shaping its future.
Why this matters for crafters
This kind of work is part of a wider shift. Open-source tools such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the BBC micro:bit have lowered the cost of entry to physical computing, while makerspaces and fab labs have opened technology development to people who do not see themselves as programmers or engineers.
The same spirit that draws people to textile hobbies—experimenting with materials, learning through making and adapting designs through trial and error—is also transforming how we create technology.
Craft knowledge, open-ended experimentation and lived experiences can all become sources of innovation. This approach also gives people who are often excluded from mainstream technology a greater voice in creating it.
A Newcastle University project called Empowering Hacks is one example: two co-researchers who identify as disabled worked with the university’s Open Lab to design a set of 3D-printed handles for powered wheelchairs.
Another project at Queen’s University experimented with 3D printing on textiles and invented Fabric-Lego for assistive wearables to customize and personalize the medical aesthetics of finger braces and arm slings.
Just as weaving looms paved the way for modern computers, other hybrid crafts can inspire innovation and practical inventions.
So the next time you pick up a weaving, crochet, knitting or sewing project, you are not just making something—you are experimenting, problem-solving and creating possibilities for new ideas.
Written by Sara Nabil, The Conversation.
