Custom Fill Motifs

Motifs are used to create fancy fills made up of simple stitch samples. They are aligned in a continuous formation to allow for seamless, continuous sewing.

Two motifs used as a fancy fill.

There are a number of pre-defined motifs included with Studio, but users can also create up to five custom fill motifs that are saved with the design. Studio contains a built-in editor for fill motifs that facilitates this task.

Motif Editor

Use the main menu > Gadgets > Fragment Editors command to open the window with available editors. Switch to the Motif Editor.

The meaning of the controls in this window is as follows:

List of Editors. The Motif Editor is one of the custom editors available in Studio.

Buttons: Reset, Cancel, or Apply changes made to the motif.

Combo box to select any of the 5 custom motifs for editing.

Work Area: Draw your custom motif here.

Motif Parameters: Width, Height, Shift.

Information Area: Cursor coordinates, warning messages, etc.

Name of the Motif.

Pop-Up Menu Button: Click this button to access a pop-up menu with additional commands: Open and Save Motif, Undo / Redo Changes, Import Background Image, Clear Motif, Show / Hide Background Image, Snap to Grid, Flip Vertically, Start / Stop simulation of motif stitches.

Splitter.

Splitter containing Tools: Undo or Redo changes, Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons, Insert Node and Delete Node buttons.

Splitter.

Controls

While the meaning of many controls in the editor window is self-explanatory, some require further clarification:

Start Simulation: Use this command from the pop-up menu to run a slow simulation of how the motif stitches will be sewn.

Save Motif: Use this command from the pop-up menu to store the motif to the disk in order to transfer it to another design.

Open Motif: Use this command from the pop-up menu to load a motif saved previously from another design.

Clear: Use this command from the pop-up menu to reset the selected custom motif to a single stitch.

Import Background Image: Use this command from the pop-up menu to open an image and use it as a template when drawing the motif.

How to Draw a New Motif

Motifs are small formations of stitches. They are created from a single stitch by inserting nodes (needle points) between the first and last point and moving them within the work area.

To examine predefined Studio motifs, Open Motif from the PATTERNS subfolder of the main EMBIRD folder.

To make a new motif, use the combo box (C) to select a custom motif to edit. The initial form of a custom motif is a single stitch.

Preserving the position of the first (S) and last (E) points ensures seamless connection of samples.

Let's create a new star-shaped motif:

New motif - initial stitch.

Insert four new nodes between the start (S) and end (E) points.

Four new nodes: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

How to delete a node? A node can be deleted with a long click or tap (about 1 second), by right-clicking the mouse button, by hitting the Delete key on the keyboard, or by clicking the Delete Node button on the vertical splitter. The first and the last node cannot be deleted, as a motif must consist of at least one stitch.

Move these nodes as depicted in the picture below.

Custom Motif - Nodes moved in the work area

Nodes 1, 2, 3, and 4 shifted in the work area.

Insert another four new nodes: (X), (Y), (Z), and (W).

New nodes: (X), (Y), (Z), and (W).

Move nodes (X), (Y), (Z), and (W) as shown in the picture below.

Final layout of nodes.

Move the overlap area node down.

Finished motif with overlap area.

Overlapped motif rows.

Parameters

Motifs are applied by Studio such that they are projected into virtual cell windows inside the fill object. The proportion of these windows is defined by the Width and Height parameters.

The adjustable gray area at the top and bottom of the work area allows you to define how much the rows of motifs overlap each other.

Shift defines the mutual shift of motif rows when projected onto a fill.

Motif rows with a shift equal to half of the motif width.