Shapes & text — Starter shapes and lettering

What’s in the Shapes popover?

A curated library of ready-to-stitch starter shapes. The first row is the plain geometry — circle, rectangle, triangle, heart — for the shapes hardest to draw steadily by hand; after those come star, hexagon and the rest, plus a broader set of icon-style artwork (animals, plants, everyday objects). Tap Shapes on the tool rail to open the popover, tap a shape to insert it in the Stitch you have active — a fill preset gives a filled silhouette, a satin preset an outline band in that width, a run preset an outline. The line drawings in the library (hummingbird, paperclip, Saturn and the like) always arrive as a run: their paths outline strokes rather than enclose an area, so a satin band along one traces both sides of every stroke and the shape disappears. They are immediately editable like anything you’d drawn by hand — move, resize, rotate, or send it through Convert to change its stitch kind.

What is the Text tool, and how do fonts differ?

Tap Text to open the lettering sheet and browse a categorized font library. Fonts fall into two families that stitch very differently:

• Stroke fonts (labeled Bean / Heavy / Satin style) — single-line letterforms stitched as a Run or Satin, good for smaller or more delicate lettering
• Filled / outline fonts — always stitched as a Tatami fill, for bold, solid block lettering

Can I set text on more than one line?

Yes — press Return in the text field and the next word starts a new line. A line break used to be replaced by a space, which turned a two-line name tag into one long line; it is now a real break.

Two settings appear as soon as there is a second line, and stay hidden while there is only one:

• Line spacing as a multiple of cap height, 1.0× to 3.0×, with the resulting distance shown in millimetres beside it. A multiple rather than a fixed length, so resizing the whole text keeps the lines in proportion.
• Alignment — left, centred or right — for how lines of unequal length sit against each other.

The block grows downward from the first line, so adding a line does not move what is already placed, and a blank line keeps its space. Everything else works on the block as a whole: width and slant, the stitch style, per-letter colours, and a drawn baseline, which carries the second line parallel to the first rather than flattening both onto the curve.

Can I make a font narrower, wider or slanted?

Yes — two settings in the text sheet, under Height and Spacing.

Letter width sets how wide the letters are drawn relative to their height, 50 % to 200 %, with 100 % the width the face was designed at. Narrow a name to fit a small hoop without making the letters shorter; widen one to fill a jacket back. The spacing you dialled in is left alone — it is its own setting, so condensing the letters does not silently close the gaps too.

Slant leans the letters, −30° to +30°, giving an italic to faces that do not ship one. The shear is about the baseline, so the letters keep standing on the line rather than sliding off it. It does not change the spacing either.

Reset width and slant appears once you have moved either one, and puts both back. Both settings apply to stroke and filled fonts alike, and a design saved before they existed opens exactly as it was.

Can I use umlauts and accents?

Yes — ä ö ü, é è ê, ñ, å and the rest of the common accented letters work in every font, upper and lower case. Where a face was drawn without them, the mark is composed: the letter plus its own small stroke, sitting on the letter’s shoulders. That is how the machine sews an accent in any case — the needle lifts between the letter and the mark.

ß is the exception. It is a letter in its own right, not a letter with a mark, so a font either has it or does not — twenty-three of the thirty stroke fonts do, seven do not. Nothing is invented in its place: if the font you picked cannot draw a character, a note appears under the text field saying so and naming fonts that can. Write ss, or pick one of those fonts.

Can I put text on a curve?

Yes, three ways, all under Baseline in the text group’s inspector. A baseline is a guide only — it is never stitched.

Bend is the quickest, and the one most words want. The slider says how many degrees of a circle the word itself covers: to one side of the middle it arches up, to the other it curves down, and at 0 it stands straight. The line is not drawn here, it is derived — so the arc always belongs to the word standing on it. Retype the text, change the face or the size, and the arc re-fits itself around the same point instead of leaving the letters hanging off the end of yesterday’s curve. Turn it far enough (from about 280°) and the arc closes into a full circle: a word wrapped all the way round, which is what a badge wants.

Draw baseline puts the Pencil in your hand: draw one stroke and the word lands on it. The line is smoothed like every other stroke you draw, and if you bring it back to where it started, it closes into a ring the word runs around.

From a shape takes the line from something already in the design — the shape library’s circle is a true circle, which no hand can draw. The path is copied, so the shape itself stays what it was: still sewn, or deleted afterwards, as you like.

A drawn or borrowed line gets one more control. Position moves the word along the line. Drag the dot on the baseline with the Pencil and the word travels with it — that is the whole gesture; the slider is there when you want an exact number. Either way the word’s middle sits where you put it, and the whole drag is one undo step. The dot and the dashed baseline appear while the word is selected with the Select tool; the dot takes the app’s accent colour. Flip puts the text on the other side of the line and turns it round in one act; it already starts on the readable side, so you only need it when you deliberately want the other one — the underside of an arch, for instance. Straight again takes the line — or the bend — away, and the letters return to their row.

Move, resize (from a corner handle) or rotate the group and a drawn baseline goes with it, keeping its size relative to the letters. A bend needs none of that: it is an angle, and an angle survives any size. An edge handle stretches unevenly, which a typeface cannot do, so that converts the group to plain paths — undo brings the text back.

The letters stay the shape the font drew them: each one is rotated as a whole, not bent. That reads better on a tight curve — and when a curve is too tight for the size, the honest fix is a gentler curve or smaller letters, not a distorted letterform.

Can I edit letters after placing text?

Yes — use Convert to Outlines to turn live, still-editable text into ordinary path objects (one path per letter), after which you can node-edit individual letterforms exactly like any other shape. Once converted, text is no longer “live” (you can’t re-type it), so do this once you’re happy with the wording. Converted letters collapse into one row per letter in the Layers panel, with a chevron to disclose each letter’s individual node-editable path.