Gradient fills are awesome – and generally difficult to accomplish.  And if you can do them correctly, they are hard to see on screen.  Wilcom Hatch has all of this covered, and more.

I have had a bit of a hard time with gradient fills in other software – they are usually a bit complicated and I don’t get the results that I want – I can handle complicated and I can figure it all out – but when its all said and done, its not enough of a gradient to blend the thread colors like I wanted to.  Also, I don’t always want a gradient going from top to bottom, I want the gradient from side to side, and even at an angle.

If you have not used gradient fills in your embroidery, now is the time using Wilcom Hatch.  I get the exact results that I wanted, plus its easy to make changes with the gradient – lots of stitch control as well as the angle of the fill can be changed too!  If you don’t know what a gradient fill is, here is a screen shot of the one I was working on for the video:

You can see by the picture that the top and the bottom of the square is darker than the rest:  thats a gradient – you could say that its almost a shading fill!  The top and the bottom parts are more dense – that means that there are more stitches closer together in the top and the bottom, and the density gradually gets thinner or less dense – and then in the middle the density is pretty open – a nice light and airy stitching in the middle.  The again the stitches gradually gets thicker, until the bottom part is the normal density.  It is a great effect to use on just about any design – of course, make sure that your gradient section is large enough for the gradient to actually show – the bigger the better for this one – the larger object will show the gradual stepping of the density much better.

Thats quick and easy to do.  The next problem is – what if you don’t want the gradient to go top and bottom?  I guess you could rotate the shape and mess around like that, but really if you rotate this shape its going to be different – longer top and bottom rather than side to side- so then you will have to change some nodes to make the shape the same.  Nah, I can’t be bothered to have to do all of that.  Wilcom Hatch has a great solution – change the angle lines to change the gradient.  Just like that, and I love gradients again!

BOOM!  THERE IT IS.  the angle line is shown with nodes outside the object itself, so you can easily move stuff around to get the look that you want.  That is an amazing amount of stitch control – and I like it!!

So there you have it GRADIENT FILLS that are easy to do, and completely custom, too!  If you would like step by step instructions, check out my quick tip video below.