Automatically Adding Seam Allowance to Cloth Pattern

Yuki Igarashi, Takeo Igarashi and Hiromasa Suzuki

Problem

To sew a real fabric, one also needs to leave an appropriate seam allowance when cutting the two-dimensional (2D) pattern. Traditional computational pattern generation methods did not automatically generate seam allowance mainly.

Contribution

Our system automatically generates seam allowance.

Our system supports four seam types as shown in Table 1. To compute the shape of seam allowance, the system first computes a distance field around the cloth pattern and then traces its iso-contour of the field.

Special treatment is applied at the corner of the cloth pattern where curved seam and straight seam meets. In this case, straight seam is folded first and then curve seam is finished by zigzag stitches (this is because it is typically difficult to fold curved seams). For each such a corner, the system sets the boundary shape of the seam allowance along the curved seams (zigzag stitch) so that that it exactly matches after folding at the straight seams (Figure 1).

Publications

Yuki Igarashi, Takeo Igarashi, Hiromasa Suzuki. "Automatically Adding Seam Allowance to Cloth Pattern." SIGGRAPH 2008 Late-Breaking Program, Los Angeles, USA, August 2008. (ACM Student Research Competition Semi Finalist) PDF Poster

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