Working with guides

Guides are the foundation lines your stitches follow: a magic ring at the center of a round, concentric circles for each round, a straight line for a row, or a curve for a shaped edge. Stitches snap to guides, and when you move or reshape a guide, the stitches on it come along.

Guide types

Switch to the Guide tool with the Stitch / Guide switch below the toolbar (or press A). The rail then offers five guides:

Line — a straight line, for working in rows.
Concentric circles — a set of rings around one center, one ring per round.
Magic ring — concentric circles with a magic-ring symbol at the center, the classic start for working in the round.
Concentric arcs — partial rings, for fans, half circles, and shaped edges.
Bézier curve — a freely shaped curve.

To place a guide, drag it from the rail onto the canvas — or click it on the rail to arm it, switch to Place mode, and click the canvas.

For a circle guide, the Inspector’s Center symbol setting chooses what is drawn at the center: None, Magic ring, or わ (the Japanese ring symbol).

Selecting and moving guides

With the Guide tool in Edit mode:

Click a guide to select it. Shift- or Cmd/Ctrl-click toggles a guide in or out of the selection, and a marquee selects every guide it touches.
Drag a selected guide to move it. Use the corner handles to scale it and the round handle to rotate it.
Arrow keys nudge the selected guides.
Delete, Backspace, or X deletes the selected guides. Esc clears the guide selection.

Moving, scaling, or rotating a guide carries the stitches snapped to it, so a whole round moves together.

Editing a guide’s shape

Selecting a guide moves it as a whole. To change its shape — the length of a line, the radius of a ring, or the points of a curve — enter shape editing:

Double-click the guide (double-tap on a touch screen), or
select one guide and press Enter, or
select Edit shape in the Inspector.

An Editing guide chip appears below the toolbar, and the guide shows its shape handles:

Line — the two endpoints.
Concentric circles — the center, and a radius handle on each ring.
Concentric arcs — the center, and the radius, start, and end of each ring.
Bézier curve — the anchor points and their control handles. Press T to cycle the selected control handle between Aligned, Vector, and Free, or right-click the handle to choose. Use Add anchor and Remove anchor in the Inspector to change the number of points, and Close loop / Open curve to join or open the ends.

When you are done, press Esc or select the Editing guide chip. (Clicking an empty part of the canvas does not end shape editing.)

With the Guide tool (A), double-click a guide to edit its shape. Drag the radius handle and the stitches on the ring follow. Right-click → Add ring above adds the next round; press Esc when you are done.

Rings

Right-click a ring of a concentric circles or arcs guide to change the number of rounds:

Add ring above and Add ring below add a ring outside or inside this one.
Remove ring removes this ring.

Each ring can carry its own round number, set in the Inspector, so the stitches snapped to it are counted in that round.

Adding stitches along a guide

To add evenly spaced stitches along a guide or ring in one step, switch to the Stitch tool, right-click the guide, and choose Add stitches…. In the Add stitches to guide dialog, a preview updates as you change the options:

Count — how many stitches to add.
Start angle — where the first stitch goes (full circles only).
Stitch — the stitch type. Switch to Combination to type a repeating sequence instead, such as sc, 2sc, sc or (ch, ch, sc) * 3, and set the number of Repeats. In a combination, 3dc adds a three-stitch increase and 2sctog a two-stitch decrease.
Orient to guide — have each stitch lean to follow the guide.
Snap by — whether the stitch Base or Top sits on the guide.
Auto width — fill guide, Stitch width, Stitch height, and Lock aspect ratio — the size of the new stitches.

Select Add to place them.

Press A for the Guide tool and drag a Magic ring onto the canvas. Press A again, right-click the ring, choose Add stitches…, set the count (the preview follows along), and select Add.

The same right-click menu has more commands for the stitches on a guide:

Select all handles, Select all tops, or Select all bases on that guide.
Distribute bases evenly, Distribute tops evenly, or Distribute both evenly around the guide.
Delete guide.

For more ways to space stitches along a guide, see Moving and arranging stitches.

Copying and pasting guides

With the Guide tool on, select one or more guides and press Cmd/Ctrl + C to copy them. Then, with the pointer where you want the copy:

Cmd/Ctrl + V pastes just the guides.
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + V (Paste guides with snapped stitches) also pastes the stitches snapped to them.
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Alt + V (Paste guides with stitch structure) also pastes the rows worked on top of those stitches.

Press A for the Guide tool, click the ring, and press Cmd/Ctrl + C. Point at an empty spot and press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + V: the ring is pasted with the stitches snapped to it.

The same paste commands are in the action toolbar on the right edge of the canvas.

Chain spaces

A chain space is a group of chains that later stitches are worked into rather than on top of — for example, a ch-3 space in a lacy round.

Select the chains, right-click, and choose Assign as space.
With the space’s chains selected, open the Space section of the Inspector and choose Set worked-into guide…, then click the guide or ring that the stitches worked into the space will sit on.

Select the chains, right-click a top, and choose Assign as space. Then, in the Inspector’s Space section, choose Set worked-into guide… and click the guide above.

Stitches snapped to that guide count as worked into the space: the written instructions describe them as worked in ch-3 sp, and a cluster can be set to Worked into: A space (see Cluster stitches).

The worked-into guide follows the space: when you move or rotate the chains, the guide moves with them. Copying all of a space’s chains also copies the space, its guide, and the stitches worked into it. To undo a space, select Dissolve space in the Inspector.