Zero-waste design is a sustainable way of manufacturing products. While sustainability can be an outcome of such designing, in fashion, zero-waste design can also be a tremendously creative patternmaking challenge by uniting the roles of designer and patternmaker in a holistic approach to creating garments, considering aesthetics and function simultaneously. The authors investigated zero-waste design for apparel through practice-based research. This discussion paper shares the results of the investigation, guided by Holly McQuillan's four ‘design practices’ for zero-waste apparel design outlined in Shaping Sustainable Fashion (McQuillan, 2011): tessellation, jigsaw, embedded jigsaw, and multiple cloth approach. The authors discuss McQuillan's practices and provide examples of their own designs. The authors propose a fifth ‘design practice’, one of draping the whole cloth with minimal cutting, called ‘minimal cut’. Designs created with minimal cut are shown and their design development also discussed.