Improving Fit on Clothing using Bent Seams

Traditionally, clothes are designed to take advantage of right-left symmetry and to accommodate the differences between the front and back of the human body. This results in flat pattern pieces shaped for the front and back geometries, then attached by seams that run parallel to the line of symmetry. Therefore, the fit of clothing is defined by the property of the material and shape of the two-dimensional pieces that meet at the seams. Seams are simple surface arc curves which are chosen to create positive or negative curvature. Here we study the way seams made from complicated curves can distribute curvature more evenly across the entire garment. For discrete surfaces, Gaussian curvature at a point is given by the angle defect. However, we can smear out this angle defect by locally bending the curve. The bending process adds or subtracts to the angle defect causing positive or negative curvature. By implementing these bent seams, a better fit is achieved for the human body.