Fractal Fill

Embird Embroidery Software Tutorial

This tutorial explains how to fill empty area with Fractal fill pattern. It is also possible to fill color areas of converted background image.

Note: See also Double-click to Fill Empty Area in Editor, Quilt Fill, Mesh Fill, Create Emoji Design and Surprise Me! - Create a new design with only a few clicks.

1 - Run Embird and click "Editor" menu to switch to Editor window.

2 - Open some design using "File > Open" menu, for example open free design "squirrel".

3 - Double click an empty area to fill it with stitches (Picture No. 1).

1. Double click an empty area to fill it with stitches

4 - Select the "Fractal" type of filling (Picture No. 2).

2. Select Fractal fill type

5 - A dialog with "Fractal" fill settings will appear (Picture No. 3). Select pattern, change parameters and click "OK" button to fill clicked empty area.

3. Fractal fill settings

There are various parameters available, allowing you to create a lot of combinations:

Tip: Change some parameter and after a short while watch the Preview box to see how it affects the final result. In some cases these previews are interactive - they allow to change the focus of applied fill pattern modification with click in Preview box to move the red focus cross - e.g. for "Fish Eye" transformation.

Type - Choose fractal type - fill pattern. Switch ON the Two colors checkbox and specify the rotation angle of this optional second color. Click ... button to select fill pattern from grid, allowing also to search by name.

Offset - Specify the offset from outside boundary (i.e. offset from hoop edges in this example) which is not filled. Switch ON the small checkbox at the right side to include the boundary curve to fill.

Bounce - Specify the bounce from cavities (i.e. offset from "squirrel" in this example, because this is cavity in filled area). Switch ON the small checkbox at the right side to include the cavity curve to fill.

Distance - Specify the length of fractal line (turtle step).

Angle - Specify angle of whole fill pattern rotation, 360 deg means random angle.

Stitch Length - Specify the stitch length.

Layers - Specify the layers (strands of thread) for stitching.

Round corners, Smoothing filter, Crook - Apply various kinds of filters to obtain more organic form of fill.

Decoration - Apply chosen decoration element.

Transform - Apply chosen transformation (Scale, Fish Eye, Skew, 3D).

Check pictures below showing various fills:

4. Fractal fill pattern "Hilbert 1", bounce 8 mm

5. Fractal fill pattern "Hex-7-b", bounce 8 mm

6. Fractal fill pattern "Penrose", bounce 8 mm

6 - It is possible to convert color areas in background image to stitches and fill them with Fractal patterns (Picture No. 7 and 8).

Note: See also Surprise Me! - Create a new design with only a few clicks.

7. Convert background image to stitches

8. Image converted to stitches, filled with Fractal "Sierpinski square 2" (offset and bounce are 0 mm)

Back to Embird Tutorial Contents