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:

• Satin fonts — single-line letterforms whose line is the centre of the stitching: as Satin (the width is a setting, the letter keeps its shape at any width), or as a Bean or Heavy line. This is the only way to satin lettering.
• Fill fonts — outline letterforms stitched as a Tatami fill, for bold, solid block lettering. Next to the curated faces the list offers the iPad’s own fonts that are bold enough to hold a fill: semibold or heavier, and passing the stroke check on a probe word. Hairline, engraved and script faces stay out — they only fail.

Among the satin fonts you will also find embroidery fonts, marked as such on their tile with a size range instead of a floor. These were digitized by hand: every stroke of every letter is a satin column drawn by an embroiderer, with its own width, taken from the Ink/Stitch font library under its open licence. They sew as satin only, at the sizes the digitizer allowed — the Height slider stops at the ends of that range — and there is no width slider, because the width is part of the letter. Density, underlay and pull compensation still come from your Stitch.

The two classes are the first two tabs at the head of the font list, Satin / Run and Fill; the third, Own, holds what you added yourself. The active Stitch decides which tab the Text tool opens on — a satin or run Stitch opens Satin / Run, a fill Stitch opens Fill — and you can switch right there. The classes themselves are not interchangeable: a fill font does not become satin lettering, and converting a filled letter to satin gives you a border around the letter, not a satin letter. A word being edited therefore keeps its tab.

For fill fonts the sheet measures the thinnest stroke of your text at the chosen height. Where it falls under what the curated faces have at their size floors — about two thirds of a millimetre — a fill has no room for rows and reads as a smudge; the sheet says so and points you to a taller size or a satin font. The curated faces carry a stitched size floor as well.

Can I use my own or purchased fonts?

Yes, in the third tab, Own. Add font… takes a folder or its ZIP from the Files app, and the app works out what is inside:

• Letter sets of finished stitches, as embroidery font shops sell them: one stitch file per character, a folder per size, the same again per machine format. Take the ZIP as it was downloaded; a ZIP holding further ZIPs is read too. A font you digitized yourself works the same way: a folder per size (or the size in the file name, A_25mm.pes), each file named after its character, lowercase as a_lower.pes, because Mac and Windows cannot keep A and a apart in one folder.
• Embroidery fonts with satin columns in the Ink/Stitch project’s folder layout (font.json, glyph SVG, LICENSE). They behave like the embroidery fonts that ship with the app.

A font file — TTF or OTF, as computer fonts come — is a fill font, so it goes into the Fill tab: Load font file… under the list takes it from the Files app. It sits between the curated faces and the iPad’s own, marked own font file, and sews exactly like those: the outline becomes a Tatami fill, and the stroke check measures the face on the way in and writes the smallest height it works at onto its tile. A bold, even face is ready at 8 mm; a face with thin strokes gets a higher floor and the dialog holds you to it. Colour and bitmap fonts have no outlines to fill and are refused. Nothing is installed on the iPad — the file stays in the app, and a long press on the tile offers Remove font. Whether a font may be stitched is a question of its licence, not of the app.

A letter set opens an overview before anything is imported: the name (editable), which format is read, the sizes to take or leave, and two sample lines on the baseline. The format is not a question for you — every format holds the same stitches, and the app reads PES, else DST, else EXP. If the archive holds none of them, it says so.

Such files carry no baseline: each is centred on its own middle. The app finds it from the stitches. The reference heights (capitals, x-height, ascenders) come from the font itself, and where a character is taller than its reference, the surplus belongs to its thinner end — a tail is a little thread, a letter’s body is a lot. That holds for a blackletter with hanging capitals. Old-style figures follow their fixed rule: 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 hang, 6 and 8 rise, and 0, 1 and 2 set the height. In a very ornate font a single character can still sit wrong: tap it in the character grid. It appears large on an alignment bench that stays at the top while the grid scrolls beneath it, between four companions of its own kind (a figure between figures, a lowercase letter between n, o, x and p), with rules for the baseline, the x-height and the capitals. Drag the character up or down with a finger or the Pencil until it stands in line. For the last hair, lead the finger away sideways while dragging: the character then follows at a quarter of the way, and a Fine mark says so. The two arrows move it by half a percent of the capital height; the correction is shown beside them as a percentage and in millimetres. The arrows next to the character step to the next one, and Apply to all figures (likewise lowercase, capitals) hands a correction to the whole kind when a font is off there altogether. Corrected characters carry a small arrow in the grid. One correction serves every size.

If you only notice a hanging character when you set a word: a long press on the font’s tile offers Align characters… with the same bench, without the ZIP. Words already set keep their stitches; Edit text sets them again with the correction. A file whose name does not give its character away is listed under Not assigned, and you type the character.

Scaling: a word in such a font scales on the canvas by ±10 % only, and that holds after To paths as well. The stitches’ density, underlay and compensation were made for exactly their size and scale with the points — a one-inch letter pulled to three times its size sews a third of its density. For more, pick another size under Edit text; the sheet says when a word is scaled within its size.

Adding a size later, or fixing a character: choose the same ZIP again. The app recognises the font by its name, opens the overview with your corrections from the first time, and ticks what is already installed. Tick more sizes, untick some, or move a character, and tap Update. Sizes this ZIP does not hold stay untouched. Change the name and you get a second font instead. So keep the ZIP; the app no longer needs it to sew, and words you have set carry their stitches in the design.

Such a font sews exactly the stitches of its files. So instead of the Height slider there are the sizes it came in (each digitized on its own — a small one in satin, a large one as a fill), and there is no “Sews with”, no width, no letter width or slant. Spacing, several lines, arc and baseline, and a colour per letter work as for any text. The files know no spacing between letter pairs; a connected script is closed with negative Spacing. A character the font lacks leaves a gap, and the note under the text field names it — purchased fonts often have no umlauts. A capitals-only font sews capitals however you type. Between letters the thread is cut, unless they touch. To paths turns the letters into ordinary stitch layers, as after opening a stitch file.

Your fonts stay on the iPad and never travel with a project file; a design holds only the stitches of the letters you set. A long press on the tile offers Align characters…, Rename… and Remove font. Renaming changes the name only: designs that use the font keep working, and the same ZIP still finds its font under the new name.

A purchased font does not sew the way it should — where can it come from?

Three things have a part in a word set in a purchased font: the font’s digitizing, what StitchPencil adds when the word is set, and the sewing itself. It helps to see first which part a problem falls into, because that is the only place it can be solved.

What you notice	Where it arises	What helps
Density, underlay, pull compensation; thread breaks, gaps, puckering; how a letter looks at its size	In the font’s stitches. StitchPencil sews them point for point and generates none of it anew.	Pick another size of the font (each is digitized on its own); beyond that, the font’s maker is the right contact.
A character sits too high or too low	At import. The files carry no baseline; StitchPencil works it out from the stitches.	Long press on the font’s tile, Align characters…, and drag the character into line.
Spacing between letters; a script does not connect	When the word is set. The files carry no spacing between letter pairs; StitchPencil sets a fixed gap.	The Spacing slider — negative for a connected script.
The wrong character appears when typing	At import. The assignment comes from the file names.	Choose the ZIP again and check the character under Not assigned or in the grid.
A character is missing (often ä, ö, ü, ß)	The font does not contain it.	Pick a font that has it; the note under the text field names the missing character.
Cuts, jumps and order between the letters	When the word is set, in StitchPencil.	See below.
Fabric, stabilizer, needle, thread tension	At the machine.	A test piece on the same material.

A simple test narrows it down: sew the same letter once straight from the font’s original file and once from StitchPencil. If both look the same, it is the font’s stitches or the material. If they differ, it is StitchPencil.

StitchPencil does two things to finished stitches: stitches under 0.4 mm are dropped and overlong ones are split, as with any opened stitch file, and a word on an arc turns its letters, whose points then land anew on the machine’s tenth-of-a-millimetre grid. Both stay within hundredths of a millimetre.

If something falls into StitchPencil’s part — baseline, assignment, spacing, the cuts between letters — or the test differs from the original, a report through Report a bug is welcome: with the font’s name, the size, the character concerned and a photo or screenshot. Such cases can usually be fixed for every font at once.

Which Stitch does text sew with?

With the one named under Sews with, directly below the tabs. It is pre-selected from your active Stitch and can be changed there; the choice belongs to this text and leaves your active Stitch as it is.

• Satin / Run lists your satin Stitches and, set apart, one Run entry. A satin Stitch brings its width along as the starting value of Satin width, which stays adjustable in the sheet (1.0 to 3.5 mm — a single line carries no more). The Run entry needs no Stitch per weight: Passes (1×, 3×, 5×, 7× — odd counts, so the thread ends at the far end of each stroke) and Stitch length are set in the sheet; everything else comes from your active run Stitch. A single pass sinks between knit ribs and reads as basting, three passes are the hand-stitched line. Embroidery fonts are greyed while Run is chosen — they are satin columns.
• Fill lists the fills a letter can carry: Tatami in any of its row textures. The three structural fill modes are not on the list: a Satin area takes its stitch direction from the width of the shape, and a letter stroke has none, so the throws would land across the strokes; Sashiko is a lattice that finds no room inside a stroke; a flow-line fill needs drawn lines a fresh word does not have. With one of those active, the tab opens on the Tatami text was last sewn with, else on the first in your Stitch library.

Editing a word later — the text, the size, a baseline — keeps the stitch the word already has, including an angle or density you set in the inspector: Sews with then reads Current Stitch. Pick another Stitch there and the word takes it. If you want satin letters instead of filled ones, start a new text on the Satin / Run tab — a filled letter cannot be turned into one.

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, 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 paths 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.