Importance of a pattern editor for knitting applications

Hi Everyone, I am Sameera Gunarathne who is a participant for GSoC ’15 for FossAsia under fashion and technology. I am developing web based GUI for knitting applications. Today I am going to talk about importance of integrating a pattern editor inside knitting applications and little bit about my work on the pattern editor implementation.

Why knitting application should have a pattern editor? It’s to simply give the user capability of doing all the editing work on the pattern before it is sent for knitting. Therefore user will be able to proceed the whole knitting process using one application. User doesn’t have to use a separate application to edit the pattern and then import the pattern to the knitting software to get knitting done. Also most these pattern editor applications are commercially available which means user has to pay for the application and its updates. So that’s extra money. Some examples for available pattern editor softwares are knitbird , envisioknit , stitchmastery  etc.

KnitBird application
KnitBird application

So what about open source knitting machine software with a feature rich pattern editor? Cool right. I am working on integrating feature rich pattern editor for the knitting web application that I am developing for FossAsia this GSoC. Following features are already added to the pattern editor implementation.

  • Getting a loaded pattern to a pixelated grid to give user a easily editable interface.[1]
  • Pixelated pattern can be generated from available yarn colours that used for knitting.[2]
  • Cropping tool for load necessary parts from the pattern.[3]
  • Rectangular/Free Hand selection of loaded pattern.[4]
  • Editing colour details of a selected area of the pattern.[5]
  • Drawing tool for the loaded pattern. [6]

User is given capability to regenerate the pattern according to the available yarn colours for the knitting. This functionality allows user to understand how the actual knitting output will be there with the available yarn colours. Below are the some of screen shots of current implementation.

Loaded pattern in pixelated grid
[1] Loaded pattern in pixelated grid
Pixelated pattern can be generated from available yarn colours
[2] Pixelated pattern can be generated from available yarn colours
Cropping tool
[3]Cropping tool
Rectangular selection
[4]Rectangular selection
Free Hand selection
[4]Free Hand selection
Editing colour details of a selected area
[5]Editing colour details of a selected area
Drawing tool
[6]Drawing tool
I am very much enthusiastic on the project and working hard to get a good outcome for the knitting web application implementation. See you with the next blog post update. Thanks :).