Color Repeats

Generate Color Sequences for Warp and Weft

Warp and Weft Threads can always be recolored by selecting a color from the palette, and using a drawing tool, clicking or dragging in the color bars above the warp or to the right of the weft threads. The Color Repeats tool allows replacing color in either warp or weft automatically with several options as described below.

Select any color from the palette and click into the vertical column. In the picture below, a green color has been selected from the palette and a single click into the first cell shows the color and the number of repeats defaults to one. Additional colors can be added in the column and the number of repeats specified for the color.

Colors entries can be deleted by clicking the row to select and pressing delete. A color can be inserted by right clicking on a color to add an empty row in the color column.

Colors can be mirrored by clicking Mirror and cleared with the Clear button.

At the top, click on whether the action is to apply to Warp or Weft.

The option of starting thread, repeats, ending and ration will be described below. The Apply button is used to take the options and color choices and apply the color as instructed to the warp or weft in the draft. Changes can be easily made and applied, followed by clicking Cloth View (or keyboard shortcut "V") to see the impact of the changes.

Repeats option

The default option is Repeats (the button group showing Repeats - Ending - Ratio). The number of repeats defaults to 1 and can be changed. Any colors in the lower part, along with their specified repeats, will be used to color in the warp or weft for the exact number of times specified. The starting thread can also be changed to something other than 1.

For example, this instruction results in the warp colors shown below the Design screen once Apply is clicked.

Ending option

The ending option allows the specified colors (and their repeats) to repeat across the entire draft or to stop at the specified thread. The ending thread defaults to the last thread; the starting and ending threads can be changed.

Resulting coloring:

Ratio Option (supports Fibonacci Stripes)

The ratio option is very powerful option to spread the desired sequence of colors in the selected proportions across warp or weft. This feature is most often used to apply the fibonnaci widths to stripes; this along with the optional ability to mirror the color sequences makes for very fast designing and testing of stripes.

The repeats color is used for the ratio numbers. Most often, one of the Fibonacci numbers is used; a hover over the Repeats column heading provides a handy reminder of 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34

In the following example, we have chosen Ratio, Listed Pattern (meaning to take the instructions from the column of colors and repeats), Fit is checked and left the default ending thread of the last warp end.

After applying, this is the resulting picture from Cloth View.

After clicking Mirror on the above panel, the colors and repeats are mirrored (pivots back from the last color which is Wasabi in this example). Now after clicking Apply, the Wasabi is in the middle of the design.

If the Weft button and apply is clicked, leaving the same colors and repeats, the following cloth is generated:

The FIT box is selected by default. This means that if the ratio doesn't fit evenly into the number of threads, then small adjustments are made to spread the colors such that each thread is colored.

By unchecking FIT, you may see extra colors where there is no structure and the ratios are exact as you specified. In this situation, you can then choose whether or not to add more structure so that all the colors are used.

It is possible to apply the ratio color repeats to any section of warp or weft by specifying the starting and ending thread. For example, if you decided to do an alternating dark light on some of the stripes, hover over the drawdown to determine the thread numbers and apply the replacing color pattern to only that section; either a normal repeat or a ratio spread can be used on this smaller section of the draft.

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