Multiple solutions often exist to reuse a garment. When possible, designers seek to reuse seams and hems (b) to reduce fabrication cost and preserve high-quality finish (insets). A seam in the target can also be avoided if the two panels to be sewed can be cut as a single panel in the source (c). Ignoring these principles results in additional work (d), as each panel needs to be cut and sewed with the others. We created these examples by hand for illustration purpose.
Our method takes as input the sewing patterns of source (a) and target (b) garments. We first quantize all panels of the two garments into polyominoes (c). This approximation allows us to generate candidate placements of target panels by sliding them over the source in discrete steps (d, only a few candidates are shown). We then select one candidate for each target panel by solving an assignment problem that balances panel deformation with the reuse of seams and hems (e). In this example, our algorithm finds a configuration where the outer seam of the pants is reused to form the central seams of the top (f - 1,2), and the bottom hem is reused to form the hem of the back (f - 3,4).
Results on diverse garments. In each case, we show the 3D models of the source and target, the reused pattern produced by our method (red dashed curves delimit the target panels, black curves delimit our optimized panels), and the resulting 3D garment.We highlight reused seams and hems with numbers.
Our formulation readily accommodates additional user preferences. As illustrated: (a) the user can forbid reuse of a specific panel (marked with a forbidden sign); (b) prefer reuse of selected seam segments (highlighted in green); and (c) apply an additional fragmentation cost to concentrate reuse on fewer panels.
@inproceedings{Qi2025rags2riches,
title={Rags2Riches: Computational Garment Reuse},
author={QI, ANRAN and PIETRONI, NICO and KOROSTELEVA, MARIA and SORKINE-HORNUNG, OLGA and BOUSSEAU, ADRIEN},
booktitle={SIGGRAPH 2025 Conference Paper},
pages={},
year={2025}
}