Part 2 of Stitch Fiddle Guide: Handy Tips

Hey Hedge & Fox lovers! After my last tutorial on the basics of Stitch Fiddle I decided to dive deeper into my favorite website for crocheting.  So I hope you all enjoy this second part and learn some helpful hints!

The Select Button

So as one of my fav tools on Stitch Fiddle is the “select” tool shown below.

This little buddy help you with so many things, such as: copying and pasting a design, coloring a large section of your graph at the same time, writing out block letters, and I’m sure even more I haven’t discovered yet.

Copy & Paste

So let's say you’ve spent a long time making this awesome design and you want a row of this design across your graph but you’re dreading having to do it on by one all over again. No worries! The select tool is here to save you! Hit your select tool and draw a box around your design.

                          Right Way                                            Wrong Way

Be sure not to select rows outside the context of your design or else you’ll have trouble with spacing and placing your copy correctly.  So once you have your design selected, right click and hit “copy”.  Now when you paste your design use your graph as a spacing guideline, decided if you want columns in-between each copy or no space at all.  For this design I’m going with no space at all for a continuous effect. When pasting you’ll put your cursor on the box you want the top left corner of your design to be in then right click and select “paste” and Wa-la!

It’s so easy!! And so helpful for uniformity when you’re creating your own patterns and designs.

Coloring/Filling in a Large Area

When I first started playing around with Stitch Fiddle I did A LOT of things the long and hard way because I didn’t know some of these tools were available, but thank God I’ve found them because they’ve made my life so much better, it’s the little things ya know?? So there are two ways that I fill in large areas with color. The first way is with the select tool. First click on the color you want to be using then just like with the copy & paste feature you select the section you want filled in and then right click to fill it with the color you want. This reminds me of playing with “Paint” back in the day on my old computer (y’all know what I’m talking about lol). This method is great for sections with corners or for drawing letters (we’ll get to that); however this next method is my go to when theres a lot of detail.

I sort of touched on this in my first post about Stitch Fiddle, but I want to get into more detail.  So let’s say you’re making a design from a picture and when you’ve transferred it over it has way too many color options.  You’ve narrowed down the colors by selecting and replacing with the colors you want to use and now you have a white background and you want it navy blue, the simplest solutions is to delete white and replace it with navy. But wait! There’s white in my design too! So this is my work around for that.

I color in the white I want to keep with an obnoxious color that totally stands out from my design, then I delete the white and replace it with whatever color you want for your background, then re-add white and delete the obnoxious color and replace it with white, and BAM presto change-o!

Making letters

The next thing I like to do with the select tool is making some quick letters and numbers. This is fun for personalizing projects. Who doesn’t like their name on things!? Using the select tool with skills we’ve talked about above makes things even and quick.  I’m using my track pad on my laptop so it’s a bit shaky, but you get the idea.

Misc Tools

The next two tips I’m about to show you are great for measuring out your graph. For example I’ll use one or the other to space out lettering or designs on my graphs.

Draw Lines Tool

This tool lets you draw temporary lines on your graph either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.  To use it you click on the “Draw Lines” button then click where you want your line to start and drag it to where you want it to end and un-click. When you’re done with the line you just click on the line.

Row/Column Filler

There’s no official name for this next tip, but I use it all the time.  When I do lettering I like to divide my graph into sections so I know how much space I have to work with. For example, if my graph has 140 columns and I want to write my name across the top I divide it by 5, so every 28 columns I’ll fill a line in the graph.  To do this you put your cursor over the number on either the row or the column and click and it will highlight the row/column and allow you to fill it.