Design

The pattern editor is designed to make it easier for you to stay focused on what is important and to go back if a change you made ends up feeling wrong.

You can, of course, draw stitch by stitch and choose the stitch type you want (full, half, quarter, three-quarter, backstitch, french knot). All DMC colours are available and symbols of used threads are automatically assigned but manually adjustable. There are metadata fields (name, description, suggested aida colour/size etc) that are added to any exported version and are visible within the app for someone using the app to track their stitches.

The layer system allows you to layer up elements rather than "overwriting" them onto existing stitches. This means that you can re-position elements without having to re-draw what was behind them. Layers can also be blended which allows background elements to "show through" depending on the blend settings. The app will figure out the thread colour required to show the correct blended result colours.

The snippet and sprite importer allow you to easily import video game elements and manage small "sub-patterns" which can be stamped into your main pattern on any layer. This gives you the freedom of perfecting smaller detailed elements in a separate canvas and only adding them to the larger canvas when they are ready. If you find it's not quite right later, you can adjust the snippet and then re-stamp it later.

Both layer blending and sprite import use automatic colour matching, where it will automatically select the closest thread colour for each actual colour, but you can also override this with your own choice of colour if the closest colour doesn't work for whatever reason.

Once you've created your masterpiece, you can export the chart to PDF including a Pattern Keeper compatible version. You can also export to other third party formats (.oxs) or a PNG preview image. The best way to share your pattern with stitchers is with my "stitch-along" format which allows the pattern to be safely loaded in stitch mode without the ability to modify and re-export.