Subtraction Cutting

At  uni we had a workshop on subtraction cutting invented by Julian Roberts. This is my step by step

                                                       

Firstly we took to pieces of fabric both 1.5m place them on top of eachother and drew a horrizontal line of 60cm and a vertical line of 135cm which can be any measurement if you wanted to change it.

Cut along both lines on both pieces of fabric

                                                Sew up the sides of the fabric together but leave
                                            the bottom horrizontal line open so that it makes a bag.

                          Put the front and back bodice pattern pieces onto the fabric and draw around in tailors
 chalk apart from the bottom piece of the pattern but be sure the do this at the top of the fabric as we found out by making the mistake of putting it right in the middle. joint up the lines by making any shape you wish. this is called the negative space. you then cut out this shape but onto on the piece of fabric you have drawn on so be sure you dont accidently cut the underneath fabric.

After sew up the side seam and shoulders and this is what you will get.

Then place 4 circle patterns onto the dress make sure none of them are in line with eachother as this makes a tunnel for the body to fit through, cut out the circles.

the circles arre in pairs so pin each pair together and sew together as this is what you end up with. Next make a linning for the dress and sew into the dress pull through and gather and sew the linning to the hem of the dress.

And this is our final garment

I really liked using subtraction cutting technique as it was all about chance and making mistakes and learning by them, we made a couple of mistakes during this process. I partially find that every time that you would do this process you would come out with a different outcome. I liked that we used the negative space as oppose to the positive like we were used to. The dress turned out to be something completely different unlike anything I have seen before. I think subtraction cutting would be useful for people that are either not particularly good at pattern cutting or that just don’t enjoy it as it may look more complicated but I found it to be a lot easier and more fun.