Add a gradient to a fill
Use a gradient for a sunset sky, the shading on a petal, or a logo that fades out to the fabric, all in one object instead of several stacked fills. You end with a single tatami shape that blends from one thread into another, or thins out to bare fabric.
New in v1.3.1. A gradient fades a tatami fill from one end of a shape to the other. It does it the way embroidery has to: not by mixing colors, but by spacing the rows. Where a color is solid the rows sit close together; as it fades they open up, until the fabric, or a second thread sewn over it, shows through.
A gradient has two ends, and each one is a thread or the fabric:
- Thread and fabric: a single-thread fade, solid at one end and thinning out to bare fabric at the other.
- Thread and thread: a two-thread blend. The first thread thins out as the second one fills in over it, so together they cover the whole shape.
You can design with a gradient and see it on screen on any plan. Exporting or publishing a design that uses one needs Pro, the same way fill patterns work. The export prompt lists it as Tatami gradients. See Plans and credits.
Turn it on
- Select a shape with a Tatami fill.
- Open Gradient: its own popover on the essentials bar, or the Gradient section next to Pattern in the Properties panel. Both show the same controls.
- Tick Gradient.
Boldbobbin picks a contrasting thread from your palette as the second end, so the blend is visible straight away. With no other thread in the palette, it fades out to the fabric instead. The essentials bar's Gradient icon turns to the accent color while a gradient is on.
The fade runs across the rows, so the fill Angle is what aims it. Turn the angle, or draw it, to point the fade where you want it.
Gradients are offered on shapes and on text with a tatami fill. For text, the controls sit inside the essentials bar's Stitching popover rather than in a popover of their own. Pixel sprites do not get one.
- Select the sky shape (a tatami fill) and tick Gradient.
- Click First color and pick orange; click Second color and pick purple.
- Turn the fill Angle until the rows run horizontally, so the fade runs from top to bottom. If orange ends up at the wrong end, turn the angle by 180°.
- Keep Profile on Even for a steady blend, or pick Fades late to keep more orange.
On a single-thread version, pick Fabric (no thread) as the second color and the sky thins out to the fabric instead.
The two colors
A bar shows the fade, over a checkerboard where it reaches the fabric. Under it are two chips:
- First color, on the left, is sewn first.
- Second color, on the right, is sewn over the first.
Click a chip, then pick its thread from the swatches below, or Fabric (no thread), which comes first in the list. Either end can be the fabric, but not both: when one end already is, the Fabric swatch is struck through ("The other color is already the fabric. One of the two has to be a thread."). The other end's thread is struck through the same way, so the two ends are never the same thread.
Flip swaps the two colors. On a blend that also changes which thread is sewn first. To turn the fade round without changing the sewing order, turn the fill angle by 180° instead.
Text that has been digitized sews part by part, and cannot carry a second thread. Its gradient is always a fade out to the fabric, and the panel says so.
The colors are set here, not on the palette
While a gradient is on, the shape's colors belong to the Gradient panel:
- Clicking a thread on the palette strip does not recolor a selected shape that has a gradient. The strip's tooltip says why.
- The color swatch in the Properties panel shows the fade and opens no picker: "Choose them in the Gradient panel."
Editing or deleting a thread in the palette does carry through to a gradient that uses it, as it does for any other object.
Row spacing
Row spacing is one slider with two handles, plus a field for each:
| Handle | Default | What it sets |
|---|---|---|
| Solid | 0.40 mm | The row spacing where a color is at full strength. |
| Faded | 2.00 mm | The row spacing where a color has faded furthest. Wider lets more fabric show through. On a blend, this is also where the other color is solid. |
The slider runs from 0.1 to 5 mm and gives more of its length to the small spacings. A drag is applied once, when you let go. The fields take anything from 0.05 mm upward, and Faded is never closer than Solid.
To let more fabric show through the faded end, widen Faded. To make the solid end cover better, bring Solid down. For example, Faded at 3 mm gives a sparser, more open fade than the 2 mm default.
While a gradient is on it owns the spacing: the fill's ordinary Spacing (Row spacing) and End row spacing are hidden, because they would mean nothing alongside it.
Overall spacing (blends)
On a two-thread blend, a read-only Overall spacing shows the density the machine actually sews. As one thread thins out the other fills in, so together they keep one steady density across the whole shape. At the defaults it reads 0.33 mm. It carries the same too-tight and too-loose warnings as an ordinary tatami's spacing: if it warns, change Solid or Faded.
Profile
The Profile decides how the first color gives way across the shape. Each icon draws the rows it makes.
| Profile | What it does |
|---|---|
| Even (the default) | The first color gives way to the second at a steady rate. |
| Fades early | The first color gives way quickly, leaving most of the shape to the second. |
| Fades late | The first color holds for most of the shape, then gives way near the end. |
| Solid ends | The first color at both ends, the second in the middle. |
| Solid middle | The first color in the middle, the second toward both ends. |
| Ripples | Bands of the first and second color, repeated across the shape. Repeats (1 to 10, default 3) sets how many. |
On a blend, the profile only moves where each color sits; the overall spacing stays the same. When the fabric is the first color, the thread follows the opposite curve, so Solid ends with the fabric first sews a solid middle.
Underlay
To give the solid part of a gradient a firmer base, tick Underlay here. A gradient lays its own underlay, so the fill's ordinary underlay controls (Edge run and Tatami underlay) are replaced by a note while it is on: "The gradient lays its own underlay. Set it under Gradient."
Underlay is off by default. Ticked, it adds one extra pass in the first thread, under the part of the shape the rows cover, and its (?) tip says how much, for example "The underlay covers the densest 25% of the shape." By default it stops where the rows open up too far to hide it. On a blend the two threads together cover the whole shape, so the underlay does too.
Underlay settings (folded away by default):
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | Where the rows get too open to hide it | How much of the shape the underlay covers, densest parts first, 0 to 100%. Raise it to support more of the shape; past the default, a warning says the underlay may show through. Not shown on a blend, which is always covered. |
| Underlay spacing | Three times Solid (1.20 mm at the defaults) | The distance between underlay rows. Bring it down for a firmer base on soft fabric. |
| Underlay angle | 90° | The turn of the underlay rows from the fill rows. At 90° they cross them, which holds the fill up best. |
| Underlay inset | 0.8 mm | How far the underlay stays inside the outline, so it cannot peek out past the edge. |
How it stitches
- A blend sews its first thread, then changes thread and sews the second over it. On export that is two color blocks, with the machine's own trim and color change between them.
- Travel stays on the outline. A move between rows never crosses the open, faded part of the shape, where it would show on bare fabric.
- A shape in several pieces fades each piece on its own, and the pieces are joined by jumps, as with plain tatami. A blend still changes thread only once: every piece's first thread, then every piece's second.
- In Vector view the shape is filled with the fade itself, so you can judge it without generating stitches. Stitch and Realistic show the real rows.
A blend is still one object, with one Layers row whose thumbnail shows both threads. It counts under both threads wherever Boldbobbin counts colors: the threads list, select by color, Hide other colors, palette reduction, and the design summary.
Convert to → Stitch block freezes a blend into one block per thread, in a folder. The blocks stay Pro-gated at export, like the gradient they came from.
Reset
The essentials bar popover's Reset puts every gradient setting back, including the second color.