Going with the flow

Published 2026-09-29

Crochet diagrams come in different forms. Some start from a magic ring, with the rounds spreading outward; others are worked in rows, going from right to left and then left to right.

It's easy to see that when a diagram is worked in rounds, the stitches sit on a series of concentric circles, and when it's worked in rows, they sit on straight lines. But what if a diagram has both? Or neither? Take a granny square: it starts with a ring of chain stitches, but as it grows outward, it becomes more and more of a square.

All or nothing

Freeform crochet charting tools handle this in almost the same way: it's an either/or option. A constraint applies to the entire diagram or not at all; there's no middle ground. Turn the guides on, and rays shoot out from the center toward infinity, with concentric circles lined up around them. Some programs even let you switch the current diagram's guide from a radial one to a square one, which can break the layout of the whole diagram, and sometimes that change can't be undone.

Mix and match

StitchPress takes a rather different approach: it doesn't enforce a diagram-wide guide, so there's no either/or choice to make. Instead, it gives you different guides to choose from and lets you combine them however you like. You can still build a diagram that grows outward on a concentric circles guide, the traditional way, but you can also combine a circle guide with line guides to make a granny square guide, with the stitches lined up along it.

To constrain a stitch to a guide, just drag one of its handles onto the guide until it snaps. From then on, the stitch moves with the guide and keeps the same relative position along it.

A double crochet's base is dragged onto a line guide and snaps into place next to two stitches already on it. Then the line's ends are dragged around, and all three stitches move with it, staying at the same spots along the line

Guides are also handy when you need to add new stitches that follow a certain shape and are evenly spaced.

Right-clicking a magic ring guide and choosing "Add stitches…": the dialog previews single crochets around the ring as the count goes from 8 down to 6, and clicking Add places them

And when you want to spread stitches you already have along a certain path, a guide can do that too.

Six double crochets are selected by their bases. "Spread bases across a guide…" is chosen from the Guide menu, and clicking a Bézier curve guide spreads the stitches evenly along it

Four kinds of guides

StitchPress currently supports four kinds of guides: the line, concentric circles, concentric arcs, and the Bézier curve.

The line

A line guide in the StitchPress editor, with a handle at each end

The line is the simplest guide in StitchPress. Drag its endpoints to set its length and angle, or drag the line itself to move it somewhere else. You can also turn on the background grid (lines or dots) to help position it, and snap its endpoints to the grid.

Editing a line guide on the background grid: each end jumps from grid line to grid line as it's dragged, until the line sits level on a grid line

Concentric circles

A concentric circles guide with three rings, a center handle and a radius handle on each ring

The concentric circles guide is the one to reach for when your diagram starts from a magic ring (there's even a magic ring version that draws the ring symbol in the middle). Right-click a ring to add a new ring above or below it and grow the diagram.

Right-clicking a ring and choosing "Add ring above" adds a larger ring around it; choosing "Add ring below" adds a smaller ring inside it

Concentric arcs

A concentric arcs guide with three rings, each starting and ending at a different angle

The concentric arcs guide works much like the concentric circles guide when it comes to editing and adding or removing rings. The only difference is that an arc isn't a closed loop: it has a start angle and an end angle, and each ring can have its own pair.

Dragging the ends of two arc rings: each ring's start and end angles change independently of the other ring

The Bézier curve

A Bézier curve guide with three anchors, each with a pair of control handles

The Bézier curve guide is the most flexible guide in StitchPress. It can be an open curve or a closed loop.

Editing a Bézier curve in StitchPress is heavily inspired by Blender (the 3D modeling software). Every segment of the curve is a cubic Bézier curve, and each anchor has a left and a right control handle. A segment is controlled by an anchor, that anchor's right handle, the next anchor, and the next anchor's left handle. (These are the four control points of a cubic Bézier curve.) You can move any of them by dragging, and each handle can be one of three types:

Vector: points straight at the previous or next anchor.
Aligned: stays on one straight line with the anchor and its other handle.
Free: no constraints at all.

We'll leave the details of the Bézier curve guide, and the how-tos, to a separate article or the documentation site.

Editing a Bézier curve guide: dragging the middle anchor moves its handles with it; with Aligned handles, dragging one handle swings the other; switching both handles to Vector points them at the neighboring anchors; switching the right handle to Free lets it move on its own

Those are the guides StitchPress has today, and you can combine them into more complex shapes. For example, two lines and two arcs make a capsule shape. And with the Bézier curve, organic shapes are much easier to draw.

In the next article, we'll look at how you can take the diagrams you make in StitchPress wherever you need them, and how we respect your intellectual property: how we store your diagrams and how they're used within StitchPress.

See you in the next one!

StitchPress is currently in pre-alpha, and we're actively looking for crochet diagram designers to help shape the experience. If you're interested and we haven't reached out to you yet, email us at contact@kinnet.studio. If you'd like to follow along with the alpha and beta tests, join the waitlist:

Join the waitlist