Tools: Fill
Break Apart Fill Objects
Fill objects can be treated best, if they are single elements without any crossing borders. Sometimes these rules are not easy to meet and your shape will have tiny little loops which are impossible to see in Inkscape.
Therefore error messages for fill areas happen quiet often and are annoying for users. This extension will help you to fix broken fill shapes. Run it on every fill shape which is causing trouble for you. It will repair your fill element and separate shapes with crossing borders into it’s pieces if necessary.
Usage
- Select one or more fill objects
- Run: Extensions > Ink/Stitch > Fill Tools > Break Apart Fill Objects
Simple or Complex
Always prefer simple when possible. It retains holes and repairs the “border crossing error” by splitting up loops into separate objects or deletes them if they are too small to embroider.
While “simple” splits up loops, it will not respect overlapping subpaths. It will treat them as separate objects. Complex is capable to recognize overlapping paths and treat them well.
“Break apart fill objects” can be expressed in native Inkscape functions:
- Path > Union (Solve subpath issues)
- Path > Break apart (Separate objectes)
- Delete objects which are too small to embroider
- Path > Combine (if you want to preserve holes)
- Path > Combine (if you want to preserve even more holes)
Info: For overlapping paths step 1 is only performed by complex.
Convert to gradient blocks
upcom Convert to gradient blocks will split a fill with a linear gradient into multiple blocks of solid color and adapted row spacing.
Usage
-
Apply a linear fill color gradient to an element.
-
Run `Extensions > Ink/Stitch > Tools: Fill > Convert to gradient blocks
Tartan
The Stripe Editor can be found in Extensions > Ink/Stitch > Tools: Fill > Tartan
Customize
Positioning
The pattern can be rotated, scaled (%) and translated (mm) as a whole
Pattern Settings
- Symmetry: Patterns can be reflected or repeated.
- A reflected pattern will reverse the stripes every second time (without repeated the pivot point). This means a pattern with three colors (green, black, yellow) will be rendered as follows: green, black, yellow, black, green, black, yellow, …
- A repeating sett will simply repeat the whole pattern over and over again: green black yellow, green, black, yellow, green, …
- Equal threadcount for warp and weft
- if disabled you can define different color setts for warp and weft
- if enabled warp and weft are the same
Stripes
- Add colors with the
Addbutton - Remove colors by clicking on
Xbehind a stripe - Alter stripe positions by click and drag
⁝(use with care) - Enable, disable stripe rendering with the checkbox (☑)
- When equal threadcount is disabled: warp defines the vertical lines, weft defines the horizontal lines
- Click on the colored field to select an other color
- When you want to change a color in multiple stripes at once, enable
Link colorsand equal colors will update simultanously
Palette Code
The Ink/Stitch code is what will be saved into the svg, but can also be edited directly.
A palette code looks for example like this: (#000000)/5.0 (#FFFFFF)/?5.0.
- Stripes are separated by spaces
- Each color is encapsulated in round brackets
(#000000) - A slash (
/) indicates a symmetrical/reflective order, whereas three points at the start and end of the code (...) represent a asymmetrical/repeating sett...(#000000)5.0 (#FFFFFF)?5.0.... - A pipe (
|) is a separator for warp and weft and should only be used if they differ in threadcount
Info: The Scottish Register of Tartans has a huge collection of registered tartan patterns. Ink/Stitch is capable to use their code which they send out per mail and convert it into the Ink/Stitch color code. Please respect their particular license regulations. Make sure to define the width of one tartan thread before you click on Apply Code.
Here’s an example code you can try out: ...B24 W4 B24 R2 K24 G24 W2... (source)
Embroidery Settings
In the embroidery settings you can decide if you want to render the tartan as a single embroidery element or if you want to receive multiple svg elements which you can edit and transform afterwards to your liking.
Embroidery Element
Rendering a tartan as a embroidery element will result in a uniform look with optimal stitch placement. You can set various parameters which can also be refined in the params dialog.
Please refer to the params listed on the tartan fill page.
The only param that will only show up here is the Minimum stripe width for fills. Stripes smaller than this value will be rendered a running stitch/bean stitch on top of the fill stripes.
SVG Elements
- Define a stitch type (Legacy Fill or AutoFill) and choose your prefered stitch settings. Stripes smaller than the
Minimum stripe width for fillsvalue will turn into strokes (running stitches). Elements can be edited on canvas after clicking onApply.
Info: For AutoFill the final routing will be better than shown in the simulator. Hit Apply can run the stitch plan to see the final result.
