Good to know

This page gathers what catches people out on first use. None of these behaviours is a fault, but every one of them reads like one when you meet it without expecting it.

Your projects do not follow you

A pattern only exists in the browser it was made in. Changing machines, changing browsers on the same machine, or clearing the site data makes it disappear from view. There is no account and no server to fall back on.

That is the price of an app that sends nothing anywhere, and exporting is the counterpart. Get into the habit of exporting before switching machines.

An import replaces, a link adds

The two ways of bringing a pattern in do not do the same thing, and that is deliberate.

Restoring a backup matches by identifier and replaces what it finds: that is what a restore is expected to do. A share link always creates a fresh copy, because the right meaning flips: someone resharing their updated pattern must not erase the work of whoever imported the first one. As a result, clicking the same link twice gives you two projects.

A share link can be refused

The pattern travels inside the address itself. Hand-drawn patterns fit with room to spare, but ones converted from a photo blow the budget: the noise in an image does not compress. Motifil says so and points you to the file export.

What sets the bound is not the browser but messaging apps, which cut an over-long link in transit. A truncated link arrives as an “unreadable link” with nobody knowing why.

A project palette never shrinks

A color that has been used stays in the palette, even after the last bead carrying it is erased. Pattern cells point at palette entries by position: removing one would shift all the following ones and repaint the drawing.

It then shows at zero in the count, which is accurate and harmless for the shopping list.

What the PNG export ignores

The image outputs the whole pattern, upright. Neither zoom, nor panning, nor the rotation of the view make it in.

That matters for rotation in particular: it turns the paper, not the weave. A pattern exported sideways would have rows that are not the ones you string.

Mirroring on an offset stitch

On brick or peyote, the exact reflection does not exist as a block of cells. The mirrored weave is the one whose other every-second row shifts, which no rearrangement of the same cells can reproduce: it would take shifting every second row by a whole bead, and so changing the size of the block.

The mirror is therefore right to within half a bead, the very offset the stitch imposes on any symmetry anyway. Every pattern editor gives the same answer.

Bracelets: one knot repaints what follows

This is the rule that surprises people most, and the real bracelet is what dictates it. A knot’s color is not chosen, it comes from the strands arriving at it. Changing a knot halfway down changes where the threads go next, and therefore everything below.

Two practical consequences. Hover a cell before clicking: the preview shows the knot in its real color, which saves you from unrolling the pattern in your head. And work top to bottom, the way you will knot.

Bracelets: the warp cannot be undone

Changing the warp, setting up all the strands at once or reversing them does not go through the history: no cell moves, it is the warp that changes. Mod+Z will not bring back the previous warp.

That is why “Set up the strands” shows a preview and asks for an explicit click: a button replacing up to sixty-four colors with no way back has to be seen coming.

Bracelets: no vertical mirror

Flipping the rows does not flip the picture, it gives a different bracelet: each knot’s color depends on everything above it, and no local transformation makes up for that. So the button does not exist, rather than existing and lying.

The horizontal mirror does exist, but it leaves the warp alone: the full mirror image also needs “Reverse the strands”.

Bracelets: the strand view folds away

As you zoom out, the ribbons give way to cells. Four threads crossing within eight pixels are just a smudge, while cells stay readable. A badge announces it above the pattern, and turning the strand view back on zooms in to the level where it means something.

What is promised, and what is approximate

Three values in Motifil are accepted approximations, and it is better to know before ordering or cutting.

• On-screen colors. What is promised is the reference: DB0752, DMC 703. How a shade renders depends on your display, and for DMC floss the values are not published by the manufacturer. Order by code, never by what you see.
• Bead dimensions. They serve the rendering and the aspect ratio of a cell. Check the manufacturer’s data sheet before producing a pattern dimensioned in millimetres.
• Bracelet thread lengths. The knot count is exact, the length is an estimate: it depends on thread thickness and how tightly you pull.

An opened example stops updating

Opening an example writes it into your database: from then on it is your project, and its card shows your version. If the shipped examples change in a Motifil update, the one you opened keeps its pattern. “Reset to original” brings it back fresh.