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What’s in a cable? Abstracting Knitting Design Elements with Blended Raster/Vector Primitives Hannah Twigg-Smith, Yuecheng Peng, Emily Whiting, and Nadya Peek
Published at UIST 2024. Paper PDF ACM DL Live Site Source Code Repository
In our design environment for editing knitting charts with blended primitives, a chart of knitting instructions is rasterized from layered vector boundaries and paths with associated raster stitch and yarn blocks. These cabled twist and braid patterns are designed using stitch paths we defined to encode a “right-leaning twist” (A) and a “left-leaning twist” (B). By placing the right twist along a stitch path that defines a purl border (C), we can produce a twist texture (D). By staggering both the left and right twists (E), we can produce a braid texture (F)

Abstract

In chart-based programming environments for machine knitting, patterns are specified at a low level by placing operations on a grid. This highly manual workflow makes it challenging to iterate on design elements such as cables, colorwork, and texture. While vector-based abstractions for knitting design elements may facili- tate higher-level manipulation, they often include interdependen- cies which require stitch-level reconciliation. To address this, we contribute a new way of specifying knits with blended vector and raster primitives. Our abstraction supports the design of interdepen- dent elements like colorwork and texture. We have implemented our blended raster/vector specification in a direct manipulation design tool where primitives are layered and rasterized, allowing for simulation of the resulting knit structure and generation of ma- chine instructions. Through examples, we show how our approach enables higher-level manipulation of various knitting techniques, including intarsia colorwork, short rows, and cables. Specifically, we show how our tool supports the design of complex patterns including origami pleat patterns and capacitive sensor patches.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{twigg2024blendedprimitives,
  title={What's in a Cable? Abstracting Knitting Design Elements with Blended Raster/Vector Primitives},
  author={Twigg-Smith, Hannah and Peng, Yuecheng and Whiting, Emily and Peek, Nadya},
  booktitle={UIST '24: Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology},
  pages={1--20},
  year={2024}
}