For a few hours on a Friday afternoon, a shrine stood in a lab at the end of a first-floor corridor in Wean Hall. Inside a nearly 9-foot tent, people solved four different puzzles to reveal words that they presented as offerings to automation and craft. One of those puzzles — and arguably the most difficult — was an inflated cube that participants had to manipulate to reveal the correct gift for the shrine.

While it may sound like a spiritual event, the shrine and its puzzles were all part of the Textile Jam, an annual event in the Textiles Lab where students and faculty from across Carnegie Mellon University collaborate on one project. The theme for this year's jam, held July 22–26, was "Go Big."

Participants from schools and departments around campus flexed new skills and taught each other as they brainstormed ideas, created puzzles, and worked to make a final piece that combined craft and technology. Students and faculty came from the Robotics Institute (RI); the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE); the School of Architecture; the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology program (IDeATe); and Cornell University.

"This is a huge fusion of techniques and ideas coming together," said Jim McCann, an associate professor in the RI. "We've got analog tech, 3D printed items, knitting, sensors, code, sewing, fabric and more."

Initial ideas for this year's project inspired by the "Go Big" theme included a large latch needle, a knitted robot and to "put something on the big dino" — which meant yarn bombing Dippy, the public sculpture of Diplodocus carnegii outside the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The shrine won out, and participants needed to learn how to sew nylon, engineer a tent, make moving LED puzzles and create an inflatable cube.

An impromptu tutorial sparked the idea for the cube puzzle. Olivia Robinson, a teaching professor in the Entertainment Technology Center and inflatables artist, swung by the jam and offered participants a lesson based on her inflatables course. She also provided the nylon used to create the puzzle.

"None of us have worked with nylon or inflatable structures, but I wouldn't be surprised if, after this, it leads to research ideas involving these items or maybe projects that involve bigger architectural structures," McCann said. 

Days before the shrine was unveiled, Textiles Lab interns Vicky Zou, a senior in ECE, and Sherry Liang, a senior at Cornell, lined up strips of red nylon that would become the letter M in the cube puzzle solution, "TIME." The Textile Jam gave them a chance to hone technical skills, like creating pressure sensors, and develop new craft abilities, like sewing.

"When you're taking classes during a regular semester or you're doing an ECE project, you don't have a lot of contact with other fields," Zou said. "But with the Textile Jam, you see art and design and tech. It's important for us to experience how we can apply our skills with different disciplines, because this is how it will be in real life. You're going to work with people who aren't in your discipline. Also, you don't know what you don't know."

When it came to erecting the actual tent portion of the shrine, participants needed assistance scaling it and laying it out. Vernelle A. A. Noel, an assistant professor in architecture, helped participants set up the structure and scale it correctly from their drawings and design. The tent hung from the ceiling, allowing it to accommodate two people comfortably. Inside the tent, knitted portraits of the concepts of craft and automation — portrayed by RI Ph.D. student Jenny Lin and McCann, respectively — hung on the wall. Once participants solved a puzzle, of which there were four, they offered the answers to either craft or automation. If correct, the offering was accepted. Depending on if participants gave the offering to craft or automation, they heard a recording that wove a narrative about the world and the two central concepts.

This was the fourth jam for Lin, who recently submitted her dissertation. She said this was a great way to unwind from thesis revisions.

"It's neat to sew nylon because you're not worried about the grain of the fabric, you just need a straight line that's airtight," she explained. "I want my thesis revisions to be just right because my thesis is very math-heavy, so precision of language is critical. But this is just a jam project. The people will bring their interpretations, and it will be all right."

Lin liked the experiential aspect of this year's jam. Still, before leaving CMU for a yearlong postdoctoral position in Utah and then a faculty position at the University of Notre Dame in 2026, she had hoped to put something on the big dino.

"I've always wanted to yarn bomb Dippy," she said. "I'm sure someone will get around to it."