Blends — Gradient fills across up to three colors

What is a Blend?

A gradient fill across up to three colors within one fill region, with control over where each color sits and how soft the transitions between them are — useful for shading, sky gradients, or any area that shouldn’t read as one flat color.

How do I turn a fill into a Blend?

Tap Blend in the object’s action grid (or a group’s action grid, for a blend that spans several fill objects together).

What does the gradient bar do?

It’s the main control surface, shown in the group inspector once a Blend exists: drag a divider between two color zones to redistribute how much space each color gets across the gradient. The divider stops on whole percent, and the numbers under the bar say how much each color has.

Under the bar there is a Transition slider for every divider. It sets how far the two colors reach into each other: left is a crisp seam, right a wide woven crossfade. So one boundary can be crisp and another very soft in the same blend.

What does a Blend start with?

Equal shares: two colors take half the shape each, three colors a third each. The transition starts at 100 %, as wide as it goes: the colors reach into each other all the way between their centers, and the pure color shows only at the two ends. For a clearer separation, move the Transition slider to the left.

What happens when I add or remove a color?

Add color redistributes to three equal thirds, wherever the divider stood before. Remove one of the three, and the two that stay share the shape half and half again. The transition keeps its value. So the way from two colors to three and back ends where it began.

The new color is a tint of the first one that can be told apart from the two already there. Tap the color layer to give it your thread.

Does a Blend always sew the same when the bar shows the same?

Yes. The Blend remembers what was set on the bar and derives the stitch rows from it. A divider that was moved and put back on 50 % sews exactly like one nobody touched. The same shape with the same bar gets the same rows in the same colors, wherever it lies in the hoop. The stitch count can still differ by a few stitches, because the way from one piece to the next depends on where the thread comes from.

A Blend from an older file does not know this setting yet. Its bar is read from the color layers, and the first move of a divider or a transition writes it down.

What do the per-layer sliders control?

Each color layer in the blend has its own position, softness, and intensity sliders, on top of the shared divider controls — for fine-tuning one color’s presence in the gradient independently of the others. They open from the sliders icon in the color layer’s row.

Position and softness of a single layer overrule the bar: from then on it shows what the layers add up to. The next move on the bar distributes by the bar again.

What are “Flow lines” in a Blend?

The same Flow tool shared with plain Fill fields: draw a guide line across the shape and the stitch rows bend to follow it, rather than running in one fixed compass direction — useful when a gradient needs to follow a curved form (a cheek, a wave) rather than a straight scanline angle. In a Blend it can be set once at the group level so every color layer follows the same guide.

Can I change or lock the angle for a whole group of blended fills?

Yes — angle can be locked at the group level so every member fill shares one consistent direction, with the axis re-derived automatically as you adjust it, rather than having to match each member’s angle by hand.

Can I copy a Blend recipe to another fill?

Yes. Copy style on a color layer takes the whole recipe along: colors, shares and transitions. Paste style on another fill builds the same Blend there, with the same bar.

Can a color layer wear the Ring pattern?

No. In a Blend the colors share the rows among them, and rings have no rows to share: a layer wearing Ring would sew the whole shape in its color, over the others. The pattern picker of a color layer therefore shows Ring dimmed, and a fill wearing Ring does not offer Blend at all — pick a row pattern first. Every other pattern works.

Can I combine a Blend with Sashiko?

No — Blend and Sashiko are mutually exclusive on the same object.

How does the thread get from one piece of a Blend to the next?

A Blend cuts every colour layer into many pieces, because the rows alternate in the transition and the shape’s notches split rows further. Between the pieces the thread has to travel, and inside a Blend one rule applies: hidden or cut. A travel may run only where it is completely covered later: under this layer’s own rows still to come, under the dense rows of the layer sewn after it, under the satin edge, under a border of running or satin stitches, under a fill on top. Where none of that holds, the thread is cut. No run along the outline through the other colour’s zone, no short hop across it, no detour. What remains is the row break of at most 1.6 mm between two of the layer’s own rows at the edge, which is the edge of the transition itself.

The connections are laid by the outline router, the same one plain fills with notches use: arcs along the outline, a thread width inside. Under a border or satin edge they are hidden and run; without an edge they are cut. That is why no thread wanders through the area any more, at any angle and on any shape, and when you move the colour slider the pieces change but nothing lies in view. A Blend without an edge pays for this in cuts, often one per piece. A plain fill without a Blend works as before and may ride its own rows in its own colour.

A colour that would get fewer than one row in five at a place gets none there. A single foreign row every two or three millimetres is a pinstripe on the fabric, not a fade. So the tails of the transition drop out and the majority colour takes those rows; the density stays. The width of the transition is still yours through the Transition slider.

Blends need an edge. Rows end on the outline, and where they meet it at a shallow angle a small staircase forms, twice as visible with two alternating colours. In the group inspector, under Edge, pick one of two: Running Stitch, a line on the outline, light and unobtrusive, or Satin, the crisp frame with an adjustable width. Both are always sewn after the last colour layer, in the colour you chose, even when that colour belongs to an earlier layer. So no row lies over the edge, and every layer’s travel may run under it. Choose the angle so the rows do not meet the shape’s long edges at a shallow angle.

The check says a transition is abrupt. What is it measuring?

How many stitch rows land in the crossfade — not how wide the crossfade is.

Two colours turn into a gradient by alternating their rows until the eye stops resolving them individually. That takes rows to alternate. If too few stitch rows fall inside the overlap, the interleaving stops reading as a mix and starts reading as stripes, and at the low end the two colours simply meet at an edge with no overlap at all.

The finding names the position along the gradient as a percentage, so there is somewhere to look. Two things fix it: widen that transition on the gradient bar, or lower Density so more rows fall inside the width you already have.

Row spacing is why the same gradient can be fine on one design and abrupt on another. A transition 4 mm wide holds eleven rows at 0.35 mm and six at 0.65 mm — so a blend that works at one row spacing reports itself at another, and a small motif reports what the same recipe did happily at twice the size.

This is advice, not a limit. A deliberately hard colour break is a legitimate look; the check only makes sure it is the one you chose.