Cut, combine & convert — Knife, Punch, Contour, Border, Join, Merge, Convert

These live in the action grid you see once an object or group is selected (see Select & transform).

What does Knife do?

Splits a Run, Satin or Fill into two separate objects along a line you draw across it — the machine equivalent of cutting a shape in half with scissors, but done before stitching, so you get two independently editable objects afterward.

On a satin column the cut keeps the angle you drew. The knife cuts both edges of the column where your line crosses them, so the new end runs along your line rather than square across the column. That is what lets you build a sharp corner by hand: cut two columns at matching angles and butt the two cut faces together, the way a picture frame is mitred. The rest of the column is untouched — only the end you cut changes.

The cut end keeps its angle through everything that follows: Simplify nodes, the width slider, and Merge. In the node editor that angle appears as a purple grip beside the node, and you can drag it to re-aim the stitches at that end.

A closed run, such as a circle, has no ends. The first cut therefore only opens it: the ring becomes an open line that starts and ends at the cut, and the app tells you so. A second cut then splits it in two. A line that crosses the ring twice halves it at once.

What does Punch do?

Uses the selected object as a stencil, stamping its shape as a cut-out (“knockout”) into whatever fill objects sit underneath it, so those fills stitch around the punched shape instead of solidly covering it. Options include an offset (shrink or grow the stencil slightly before punching) and whether the punching object itself remains after the punch or is consumed by it; it also works across a multi-object selection or a whole group at once.

What does Intersect do?

Intersect appears as soon as two or more layers with a fill are selected. It turns the area that all selected fills have in common into a new fill and puts it on top. The layers it was made from stay as they are.

It is the third next to the other two: Merge makes one area out of two, Punch takes one out of the other, Intersect keeps what belongs to both. A shadow inside a letter, or a second colour only where two shapes meet, is one tap this way.

The new fill takes its Stitch and colour from the topmost of the selected layers and is named “Intersection”. Where the shapes meet in several places, several fills are made, as a group. A group or a word counts as one area with all of its fills. If the shapes do not overlap, a message says so and nothing happens.

What does Border do?

Adds an outline around the selected shape, with a choice of offset position: On edge, Outside, or Inside — useful for giving a fill a clean satin edge, or for Fit under border to have something to snap to.

It works on a group as well as a single shape, and that is where it earns its name: filled lettering with a satin outline is one tap on the whole word — every letter and every hole (the inside of an a, both holes of a B) gets its ring, in the thread you choose, sewn after the letters so it lands on top of them.

Around live text the outline stays live with it. Retype the word, change the face or the size, bend the baseline, and the outline is made again from the letters that are there now — the word and its edge cannot drift apart. Editing the outline objects by hand is possible, but the next change to the text replaces them, so make the word right first and dress it afterwards. An outline in the letters’ own colour needs no separate objects at all: use Satin edge in the group’s Tatami section instead.

What does Contour do?

Draws a line at a distance you set around the selection — an echo line, a margin, an outline around lettering. It offsets areas, so it works on a Fill, on a Satin column (the band between its rails is an area, so an open stroke is fine), on the letters of a satin font (one at a time or the whole word) — a contour around live text follows the word like a border does: change the text, face or size and it is rebuilt, move the word and it moves along; only “To paths” ends that, and on a Run whose stroke closes into a ring. An open line has no inside and cannot have a contour; the panel says so instead of quietly leaving it out.

The panel gives you the distance (2.0 mm by default, drag the slider or tap the number and type it), Outside / Inside / Both, how many lines (up to five, evenly spaced), and the Stitch to sew them with — Run, Satin or Fill first, then that kind’s presets. A dashed preview on the canvas follows the slider, so you see where the line lands before it exists.

A Fill stitch turns the contour into an area: the space inside the line is filled, and the result is inserted before the shapes it surrounds, so it sews first. That is the knockdown under a towel motif at the motif’s own margin — select the motifs, Contour, Around all, corners rounded, Stitch Knockdown, done. An area has one edge, so Both and the number of lines are not asked; per shape, the offset of a hole stays a hole. The result is an ordinary fill, named after the stitch (“Star Knockdown”), and you can change it like any other.

Shapes that touch are always contoured together — two overlapping letters never get a line through their own seam. What separate shapes mean is a question geometry cannot answer, so the panel asks it whenever the selection covers more than one area:

• Per shape — a line around each one. The edge of every part: echo lines, a border on each letter.
• Around all — one line around the lot. Gaps are bridged with a soft fillet that follows the shapes rather than cutting the bay between them off, and what lies between the parts stays inside. This is the outline of a patch, the placement line of an appliqué.

Around all is preselected for a multi-selection, because that is usually what selecting several things and asking for a contour means. In Per shape, the panel says how the merging worked out — “7 shapes make 4 areas here” — so three lines out of four selected shapes reads as arithmetic rather than caprice. Parts that lie far apart get a fuller belly between them — the dashed preview shows it before anything is created.

The distance is measured from the edge of the shape, and every line steps off the original, so three lines at 2 mm sit at 2, 4 and 6 mm. In Per shape, holes come along at the same distance from the material — the hole of an “o” gets its own line; in Around all they do not, since the point of that mode is the outside.

Corners decides what happens where the line turns a sharp corner. Going outward, only the inward corners are sharp — the V between two petals, the waist a bridge leaves between two parts; the outward ones come back as arcs of the distance itself, so the line already rounds a leaf tip on its own. As drawn leaves the sharp ones sharp. Rounded fills them with an arc, and a Corner radius slider (1–10 mm, starting at 3) sets how wide. A notch narrower than twice the radius closes over completely — and if that swallows a line, say the one inside a small hole, the panel says so rather than quietly handing you one line fewer. In Per shape the rounding works on each shape by itself, so a wide radius can never weld two contours into one. Going inside it is the mirror image, the outward corners being the sharp ones there. Either way the rounding only ever moves the line away from the material, so the distance you set stays a minimum and never becomes an average. The dashed preview follows both, so you see the answer before you commit.

The result is ordinary objects, inserted right behind their source in the same color. They do not follow the shape if you edit it later — reshape the source, then contour again.

Contour and Border overlap: Border is the fill-only classic (on the edge, or half the border’s width outside/inside, holes included), Contour is the general tool with a free distance, several lines and any closed object.

What does Join do?

Makes several objects sew in one go — what other programs call branching, and for lines redwork — while every one of them stays its own object, editable and reversible (ungroup and everything is as before). It is the same action wherever you find it: on a loose multi-selection (which groups the objects first) and on a group you already made, and it works for every stitch kind — satin columns, lines, fills.

Join does two things. First it puts the members into the one sew order a branched figure wants: touching satin columns (a T, a Y, a star — most lettering) sort so that each cover lands over what came before; lines sort into a single pass; fills keep your drawn order. Second, it treats the stretches between the members as connectors under one rule: where the thread has to come back, it runs hidden under a piece stitched later or doubled along a line it retraces — never across bare fabric — and where nothing will ever cover it, it is cut instead. The layer row reports what actually came out, measured from the stitch plan: Joined · 3 × Satin · 2 hidden travels.

The way between two members may run along any other member of the group in the same colour: two pumpkin segment lines that touch only at the pole are joined along the outline column sewn over them later. Under a column still to be sewn such a way is invisible, so it may be long: a segment line entered at the far pole is run up along its own line and sewn back over it, up to 150 mm. On a column already finished it rides on top, in the same colour but visible on smooth satin, so there it is 25 mm at most. Beyond that the thread is cut.

Satin areas join the same way, along the line between their two ends. And a member that lies over a spot as an area and is sewn later covers any hop beneath it, whatever its colour: on a propeller of blades on a hub sewn last, every blade is sewn tip to hub, and the way to the next blade runs under the hub and under that blade itself out to its tip — one cut per colour change, none otherwise. The blades have to reach into the hub for that; a gap of fabric between them is cut. The colours sort themselves within the group: two gold blades among black ones are sewn one after the other, one colour change instead of three — as long as the blades overlap only under the hub. Where two members of different colours visibly lie on top of each other, the drawn order stays, because it is the picture.

Two things stay in your hands afterwards:

• Entry and exit of each member remain the draggable green handles they always were. Left alone, each piece starts at whichever of its ends is nearest to where the previous piece finished, so the thread has the shortest possible way to go. Dragging a handle overrides that.
• Hide travels, the switch on the joined group, off: Cut instead. Turned off, the group ties off and cuts the thread after every member — some prefer the extra stops to any doubled thread. The default for new joins sits in Design settings next to the trim rule, and changing it there re-applies to the joined groups already in the design; each group can still decide for itself afterwards.

A joined group is marked with a green link icon in the Layers panel so it’s visually obvious later which objects are actually one unit.

What does Merge do?

Join’s destructive sibling: out of the members it makes one object, and the parts are gone — no ungroup brings them back (undo does). What it produces depends on the stitch kind:

• Fill — a genuine union of the shapes. Holes are preserved; parts that do not overlap stay grouped.
• Running stitch — one continuous path. Touching or crossing lines become a single pass with minimal doubling.
• Satin columns that form a chain — one column. Their rungs are carried over exactly as drawn, so a cut end keeps its angle and a pressure-drawn width profile survives. Satin that branches refuses to merge — a T or a star has no single centreline, and welding one through it would lay a bold satin band across the motif. That case is exactly what Join is for, and the message says so. An h — the arch leaves the stem half way up — is such a case. For 3D puff the columns do not need to be one: select both and choose 3D Puff, they go onto one piece of foam together. A refused merge leaves everything as it was, ungrouped.

For the chain case, ends that sit slightly apart are pulled together — the tolerance grows with the column, from 1.5 mm on a narrow one up to 3 mm on a wide one, and both sides share the correction so neither column is dragged on its own. Ends further apart than that are left exactly where you drew them and the message says so; that is not a hand-drawing inaccuracy any more, and closing it silently would move stitches you placed on purpose.

Where two ends meet at an angle, Merge builds a real corner: both edges run on to where they cross, so the point lands where you drew it. The rung spanning that turn is the mitre line — and the two columns are sawn on it, the way a picture frame is made, each arm keeping its own stitch direction right up to the cut. Left as one long rung it becomes a funnel: every stitch near the turn aims into that single line and the thread piles up, on an 8 mm column at a right angle about three times as much thread in the corner as anywhere else. Sawn, the corner carries what the rest of the column carries, the outer point does not move, and no cover is lost. Where the rungs cannot reach the mitre line — a hand-drawn column whose stitches lie at an angle to the turn — the corner keeps its long rung instead, because sawing there would leave the wedge behind it bare.

What does Convert do?

Changes an object’s underlying stitch kind — Run ↔ Satin ↔ Fill — via a matrix of what’s allowed to convert into what (not every combination is meaningful, so some paths are gated with an explanation rather than silently failing). Converting text to a path uses the letter as the geometric unit, and converting a shape with an interior cut-out preserves it as a proper hole ring rather than flattening it away.

A fill that becomes satin — the entry is called Satin border — gets its band inside the outline, like a border placed inside: the band’s outer edge is the shape’s edge, nothing lands on bare fabric, and the width slider afterwards narrows or widens the same band. The band is as wide as the shape can carry — on a stroke thinner than the preset it is set to the stroke’s own width, and the message says so. A shape thinner than a satin can be is refused; make it a run instead. A line that becomes satin — a run, or a satin’s centreline — gets the band astride it, because the line is where you drew the centre.

A letter from a fill font remembers where it came from, also after “To paths”: it stays a fill. Convert offers it neither Satin nor Run and says why — satin lettering is a satin font, and a border around a letter is not one.

A border or contour that follows live text is made again with every change to the word. Convert and Satin column along the middle are locked there, because the result would be gone with the next letter typed. Convert the word with To paths first; after that the border is yours.

What does “Satin column along the middle” do?

Satin column along the middle is an entry in a fill’s Convert menu. It turns a filled shape that is really a band into what it looks like: a satin column along its centreline, as wide at every point as the shape is there. The typical case is an imported drawing in which every stroke arrives as a narrow area: a stem, a tendril, a whisker, a frame.

What comes out depends on the shape:

• A band of even width becomes a column of that width. The Width slider shows it.
• A shape whose width changes (a leaf, a drop, a crescent) becomes a column with a width per node. Nodes stand where the width changes; in node editing each one can be adjusted on its own.
• A ring (an area with one hole, evenly wide or not) becomes a closed column.
• A band under 1 mm is thinner than a column can be. It becomes a run along the centreline.

The object stays the same layer: name, colour and place in the stitch sequence do not change. Density, underlay and pull compensation come from your satin Stitch in the tool rail, as with every conversion. Afterwards it is an ordinary satin column with everything that belongs to one: nodes, knife, caps, 3D puff.

Sharp corners belong to the band: an L, a U, a chevron or a square frame becomes a column that runs round the corner.

These shapes stay fills, and the message says which it was:

• Shapes with several arms (a T, a star, a hand). A column needs one line from one end to the other. Cut the shape into its arms with the Knife and convert each arm on its own.
• Shapes as wide as they are long (a disc, a square, a disc with a small hole as well). There is no band a line could run along.
• Shapes wider than 10 mm. A satin column that wide lies long and loose; the shape stays a fill, and the message says so.
• Bands that turn tighter than their width allows — a bar folded back round a narrow slot, like the middle of a 3. The column’s inner edge would run backwards and the stitches would fan across the turn. The place is marked on the canvas: cut there with the Knife and convert each piece.

With a group or a multi-selection, whatever has a centreline is converted; the rest stays, and the message names both numbers. All of it is one step in Undo.

The difference from Satin border in the same menu: Satin border lays a band inside the outline of the area, a border. Satin column along the middle fills the area across. And the difference from Satin area, also in the same menu (the satin area): the satin area stays a fill that is sewn across with satin, turning with the shape, and what you edit is still its outline. After Satin column along the middle you edit the line and the widths.

What does “Overlaps” (Remove Overlaps) do?

Hides stitches that end up completely hidden underneath objects stitched later, so the machine doesn’t waste time and thread stitching a layer nobody will ever see. It reports how much it took — a trim that ate most of an object usually means the layer order is wrong, not that you saved a lot of thread.

It works on a fill and on a satin column: a border running under a later piece is the same question. The two are cut differently, though. A fill simply loses the covered area. A column can’t have a notch bitten out of its side, so the covered stretch is cut out end to end and what remains comes back as separate columns, numbered after the original; a column that is covered along its whole length is deleted outright. Columns in the same group never trim each other, so the pieces of one appliqué letter stay intact.

An appliqué cover is a special case in the other direction: what covers the layer beneath it is not just the 2 mm satin band but the piece of cloth inside it, so everything under that letter is hidden, not only what runs under its edge.

Select exactly one object — there is no group or multi-selection version. If nothing later covers it, you get told so rather than a silent no-op.

It does not trim flush to the covering object’s edge: it leaves a margin tucked underneath, because the two edges pull apart slightly on fabric and a gap would open along the seam. How wide that margin is comes from Overlap under covers in Design settings — soft, stretchy cloth wants more of it.

This one edits the object’s shape, so it is not a display setting you can flip back and forth: changing the margin afterwards does not re-cut what was already cut. Undo and run it again.

What does “Fit under satin border” do?

Snaps a fill’s edge to sit just inside a matching closed satin border drawn over it, so the fill doesn’t peek out past the border or leave a visible gap — this is the manual trigger for the same behavior the app-wide assistant can also do automatically.