This project was for my Arduino Prototyping capstone class in which we were to make a project that responded to some kind of sensor input and reacted like magic with a visually appealing structure completely covering the circuitry, like a real film prop. 

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I made a mini version of Cinderella's transforming dress. I hand-sewed the dress prop myself, modeling it after quick-change dresses in stage productions of Cinderella. The base of the dress is her scrappy rag dress and tucked up into the apron is the beautiful ballgown layer. A small yarn "belt" attaches from a pin holding the waist of the dress to a 3-D printed pumpkin (on theme!) that contained a DC motor and an infrared sensor. When a user activated the magic wand (decorated infrared remote), the DC motor would spin, pulling the pin and releasing the gown layer as the makeshift dress stand (chopsticks and a spool of thread) rotated via stepper motor. 

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This project contained multiple material challenges to overcome-- the dress stand was too heavy, the DC motor wasn't strong enough to pull the yarn, everything kept becoming disconnected when I moved it into the cardboard box that covered the circuitry. However, it was exciting to be able to flex my creativity like this and despite the fact that the gown layer was too light to fully unfold when the belt was released, the desired effect was achieved and I'm proud of what I was able to construct.