Colorwork deserves better than graph paper.
Anyone who has designed colorwork knows the ritual: a spreadsheet with the cells squared off, a photo of hand-drawn graph paper, or desktop software that was last rethought when Flash was current. You chart in one place, picture the garment in another, and find out whether the two agree only after a week of stitching.
We wanted the whole loop in one place, on the phone already in your project bag. A scarf is twenty thousand stitches, and the whole of it moves under your finger: pinch in to fix a single stitch, pinch out to see how it reads from across the room. Loomico also knows a stitch is not a square, so it draws your chart in the stitch you are working, stockinette or single crochet. You design for the thing you are actually going to make, not a squashed version of it.
Loomico is the space between “I have an idea” and “I made this.”
Your finger is the brush.
Brush, fill, erase and sample. Draw it, change it, take it apart, try the colourway you talked yourself out of: something beautiful usually takes a few bad ideas first. Every edit saves itself, so there is no save button anywhere in the app and nothing a maker has to remember to press.
Open a piece, paint a motif cell by cell, flood-fill a region, then pinch-zoom out to the whole chart.
Row by row, and nothing else lit.
Rows you have finished stay readable, because you check yourself against them. Rows you have not reached get out of the way. Then put the phone down: the best part happens in your hands.
Follow a chart and step up several rows; the worked rows stay readable, the unworked ones recede.
Inspiration does not come in templates.
Photograph whatever started it, a tile, a painting, the light on a wall, and Loomico turns it into a chart in the colours you actually own. The stitch count is on screen before you commit, so you know what you are agreeing to make.
Pick a photo, watch the preview quantise it to a yarn palette, adjust the colour count, turn it into a chart.
The things people ask us.
Can I turn a photo into a knitting or crochet chart?
Yes. Pick a photo and Loomico reduces it to a colorwork chart in a palette drawn from the image itself, using a perceptual colour model so the yarns it picks are the ones your eye would pick. You see the stitch count and adjust the number of colours before you commit to anything.
Does it work for Fair Isle and intarsia?
Both. A colorwork chart is a colorwork chart. Fair Isle, stranded colourwork, intarsia and duplicate stitch are all techniques for working one. Loomico charts the design; you choose how to work it.
Is it for crochet as well as knitting?
Yes. Tapestry crochet, granny squares and pixel crochet all read from a grid the same way knitting does, and the garment list includes crochet shapes alongside the knitted ones. The chart previews in single crochet as well as stockinette, so the fabric on screen is the one you are making. The gauge presets are knitting gauges for now, so for crochet pick the one closest to your own tension.
Do the charts account for knitting gauge?
They do, and it matters more than people expect. A stitch is wider than it is tall. A typical DK colourwork gauge is 22 stitches to 30 rows over 10 cm, so a design drawn on square graph paper comes out squashed in real fabric. Loomico ships gauge presets from fingering through chunky and sizes the garment from the gauge you pick.
Can I export or print a chart?
Yes. Any design exports to PDF from the app, so you can print it or take it to a shop.
When can I get it, and what will it cost?
Loomico is in private testing for iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and we will email you once, on the day it reaches your store. Pricing is not settled yet, and we would rather tell you the truth than a placeholder.
Are you excited? Because we are.
Loomico is in private testing. Leave an address and we will tell you the day it reaches your store: once, and then never again. No list, no newsletter, nothing to unsubscribe from.