A Pattern Making Approach to Improving Zero-Waste Fashion Design

Whilst zero-waste fashion with creative pattern making is shaping sustainable fashion, excessive pattern pieces, complicated workmanship, and limited fashion styles are continuing to trouble designers. As a means of addressing the problem, the key attributes of clothing style, body dimensions, and textile performance are the basis for this research. This article proposes a zero-waste pattern making approach comprising three techniques: One-piece Manipulation (OM), Segmentation and Reconstruction (SR), and Fabric Elasticity Application (FEA). On the basis of body dimensions, different garments could be designed by manipulating the excess fabric on garments with the application of fitting devices, embellishments, and three-dimensional forms. With regard to this approach’s workflow, zero-waste garment practices were designed in the three techniques, illustrating that the approach built both an effective and efficient framework for subsequent zero-waste design. This systematic approach makes contributions to support zero-waste design in various garment constructions and simultaneously reflects the principle of zero-waste fashion.