Opening files from other apps

Which files can the Gallery open?

Tap Import in the Gallery’s top bar and pick the file. StitchPencil looks inside it to see what it is, so a file whose name lost its extension on the way opens all the same:

• Designs and fonts — StitchPencil’s own .hoop project files, .vemb files written by Boldbobbin, and .hoopfont fonts. Designs come back as themselves: shapes, settings, the lot; a font goes into the Text tool under Own. Shape packs and thread palettes go where they belong, too.
• Machine files — Brother .pes, Tajima .dst or Melco .exp. These come back as stitches, which is a different thing — see below.

Other machine formats (JEF, VP3) cannot be opened yet. Artwork comes in through SVG import instead.

What does the stitch-file import actually give me?

The design, as stitches you can edit — cut into sections at every trim, jump and colour change, with the file’s own thread colours.

You can move a section, recolour it, hide it, change its place in the sewing order, delete it, and export the result to any format StitchPencil writes. What you get back is faithful: the needle positions in the file are the needle positions in your design.

What you do not get back is the way the design was built. Outlines, column widths, row spacing, underlay settings, object names — none of that is in a stitch file. It never was. A .pes holds needle positions, a jump flag and a colour index, and nothing else, in every version from the oldest to the newest. A .dst and an .exp hold even less — they do not name the threads at all.

So this is the tool for “I only have the export any more”. It is not a way to recover the design you digitised.

Can I take stitches out, or give part of a design another colour?

Yes — with Stitches, in the selection bar where other objects show the Knife. It works on finished stitches only.

• Tap a part to pick it whole; tap it again to put it back. A tap beside the design lets the whole pick go. A part picked in the Layers panel joins the pick too.
• Circle stitches with the Pencil to pick just those — a name across a design, a leaf, a stray tuft. Every stitch inside the loop is picked, from any part.
• When the pick is one unbroken run, its first stitch shows green and its last stitch red. Drag either end along the stitches with the Pencil or a finger — a touch on an end always takes hold of it, so to put a short part back, tap it away from its ends or use the ✕. For single stitches, the arrows in the bar move either end one stitch at a time; hold an arrow and it runs on, faster the longer you hold it. A pick in several pieces has no ends to move; the bar says so.

Then, in the same bar:

• Unpick takes the picked stitches out. Wherever that leaves the thread ending on bare fabric, it is tied off and cut — no thread is ever carried across the gap, and the part after the gap ties in again.
• Separate makes the picked stitches a part of their own. Nothing about the sewing changes; the new part can be recoloured, moved or put elsewhere in the sewing order like any other — its ends are tied off for that, and the knots only sew once the thread really has to leave.
• Recolor gives them another thread of the design. The + opens the Colour inspector for the pick: any thread from your catalogues, handy for a DST, which brings one placeholder colour. While you edit stitches, a thread picked in the Colour inspector always recolours the pick. Where the colour now changes, the thread is tied off and in, and the part keeps its place in the sewing order.

Each of these is one step to undo. Done ends the mode and leaves the parts you picked whole selected, ready to move or reorder; any other tool ends it too.

Can I resize an imported stitch file?

Only a little. Scaling stitches does not re-space them, so making a design much bigger opens gaps between the rows and making it much smaller packs them into a hard, thread-breaking mass. A few percent is safe; doubling the size is not. So StitchPencil keeps imported stitches within ±20 % of their original size: the handle will not drag further, and a message says why. A file you opened before this rule and had already scaled further stays as it is.

This is a property of stitch files, not of StitchPencil — the same limit applies in every program.

Why did my DST or EXP arrive in colours it never had?

Neither format stores thread colours — only the points where the colour changes. So the import gives each block its own placeholder, muted on purpose, just so you can tell the blocks apart in the Layers panel. Set the real threads in the Colour inspector.

A .pes does carry its threads, and those come across as they are.

Can I get the shapes back — a satin column instead of stitches?

For a satin column, often yes. Select an imported section, then Convert → Read as Satin Column.

What it does: it finds the zigzag, takes its two sides as the column’s rails, measures the width and the spacing from the stitches themselves, and hands you a real satin object with a width slider and editable nodes. Any stitches the zigzag does not claim — the underlay, in most files — stay as their own object in front of it. Nothing is thrown away.

Before you get it, the column is sewn back out and held against the stitches it came from. If it does not land on the original thread, it is refused and your stitches are left alone. On the lettering it was built against, the sewn line stayed within 0.15 mm of the original.

It will decline more often than you expect, and that is the point. A filled shape is not offered at all yet — a tatami’s rows run back and forth exactly like a zigzag, so nothing but the shape of the rungs tells them apart, and a fill with a decorative satin edge really does contain a perfect column that is not the object. Reading that would leave you an outline where a filled shape was.

Does reading a column change my design?

Yes, and only then. The import itself is faithful — the needle positions in the file are the needle positions in your design. A column that has been read is re-generated afterwards, so its penetrations move a little and their count changes.

That is a fair trade when you want to edit the column. It is a needless one when you only wanted to recolour it, which is why it happens on request and never on its own.

Why does it say “47 stitches shorter than 0.4 mm were removed”?

Many digitising programs leave needle movements so short that the machine puts two penetrations in the same hole. StitchPencil removes them on import, for the same reason it never creates them: at speed they are what breaks thread.

They are under 0.4 mm — smaller than what you can find on the cloth afterwards.

Why is my import one colour when the file has several?

Some writers list several threads in the file’s colour table but never mark a colour change in the stitches. There is then nothing to cut on, and everything arrives in the first thread. Recolour the sections by hand in the Colour inspector.

What happens to the original file?

Nothing. An import always creates a new design in your library, stored as .hoop. Reading .vemb is one-way — StitchPencil never writes that format, so there is nothing to sync back and no way to damage the original.

What carries across from a .vemb?

Shapes, colours, groups, the hoop, and each object’s stitch settings:

• Fills — row spacing, angle, stitch length, underlay on/off
• Satin columns — spacing, and their centre/contour underlay
• Running stitches — stitch length; a bean run arrives as a 3-pass run

Objects you named keep their name; deleted objects stay deleted; anything undone in the other app stays undone.

Why is the stitch count different from the original app?

Because the stitches are re-generated, not copied. StitchPencil keeps only the editable design and derives every stitch from it — that is what lets you change a shape and have it re-sew itself.

One consequence is worth knowing: the imported spacing values arrive as your designed values, so the design’s target fabric applies on top of them. A fill sews tighter on Knit/Jersey than on Woven. If the import looks denser than you expected, that is where it comes from — and switching the fabric back restores the designed numbers exactly.

What does “3 edits this app does not know were skipped” mean?

Some edits in a .vemb have no equivalent in StitchPencil. Skipping one quietly could hand you a design that looks perfectly plausible and is wrong — the missing edit might be the one that moved, deleted or reshaped something. So they are counted and named instead.

If you see this message, compare the import against the original before you sew it; the names tell you what kind of edit went missing. No message means everything came across.

What does “12 curve points arrived without control handles” mean?

Some curve points arrive without the information that gives them their curve. They come in as plain corners, so a rounded outline can look slightly straightened.

You can round it back by hand in Nodes.

What does “The hoop size could not be read from the file” mean?

Not every .vemb carries a hoop size that can be read back. When it cannot, the design falls back to a default frame and says so. Set the real size in Design settings.

The import was refused — why?

• “This .vemb was written by a newer version” — a file from a newer version can mean things StitchPencil cannot read reliably, and guessing is exactly how a design comes out subtly wrong. It refuses rather than guessing.
• “That .vemb has no shapes to import” — the file was read correctly but contained nothing stitchable.
• “Not a readable project file” — the file isn’t a .hoop or a .vemb at all, or it is damaged.