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Stitch Draft — a first draft from flat artwork

An experimental tool that turns a flat image — a sticker, a logo, a line drawing — into editable stitch objects: regions become fills, and line work can become runs. It makes a rough first draft, never a finished design; you always refine the result by hand with the ordinary tools. It is off by default.

App settings → Labs → Stitch Draft. A confirmation explains that the tool is still in development. Once on, a Create Stitch Draft tile appears in the tool rail above Select; it takes a picture from the photo library or from Files and opens the assistant.

  • Gradients become blends — a color ramp in the picture becomes a real blend of two or three threads instead of banded stripes.
  • Detect line work — thin dark lines become runs instead of being swallowed by the fills around them.
  • Remove background and Despeckle — drop the paper behind the artwork and the JPG noise in it.
  • Follow texture direction — fills take their angle from the grain of the region.
  • Keep original as reference — the picture stays on the canvas as a reference image under the stitches.

The result line says what happened: how many regions became objects, and how many details were dropped — those are drawn dashed in the preview, so you see what was left out before you accept. Text in the picture is recognised as a zone and left out on purpose: letters come out better set as text.

Photos and complex images. A picture with soft shading, many similar colors or fine texture does not convert reliably — the assistant says so when the picture looks like a photo. For those, trace over a reference image by hand.