Weave Pattern Generator
A weave pattern generator for basket weave, twill, herringbone, cross-hatching, dot lattices and folk diamonds in two colors. Free in the browser, PNG or MP4.
What is a weave pattern?
Woven cloth is two sets of threads crossing at right angles. The warp is held lengthwise on the loom, and the weft gets passed over and under it. Which thread ends up on top at each crossing is what's called the weave, and that decides the pattern you see in the cloth.
On this page the upright threads take the Thread color and the ones running across take Ground. Basket goes over one and under one, like a plain weave. Twill goes over two and under two and steps one thread each row, which makes diagonal ribs. Herringbone flips that twill every four threads to get the broken zigzag of tweed.
Which stitch patterns are there besides cloth?
There are three. Cross-hatch draws two sets of crossing lines, like pen-and-ink shading. Dot lattice puts dots on every other row, shifted half a step, with a soft highlight on each. Folk diamonds builds stepped diamonds nested one inside the other out of square stitches, the way cross-stitch embroidery does.
How to make a woven background
Choose a Weave or a preset (Basket, Denim twill, Tweed, Cross-hatch, Dot lattice or Folk diamonds) and set Size, which is the width of one thread or stitch in pixels of a 1080p frame. Thickness only affects Cross-hatch and Dot lattice, where it sets how heavy the lines or dots are.
Shading rounds the threads and darkens them where they dip under the next one. At 0 the colors are flat, and Cross-hatch doesn't use it at all. Angle rotates the whole cloth, Speed slides it in either direction, and Thread and Ground are the two colors.
Settings for denim, a tweed jacket and a folk border
Denim: the Denim twill preset sets up Twill at Size 14, indigo #27407a over pale blue #c9d6ee, with the indigo running upright like a denim warp. Real denim is usually a 3/1 twill and this is a 2/2, but at that size you can't tell the diagonal ribs apart.
Tweed: the Tweed preset is Herringbone at Size 16 in #3d3a36 and #a89f91, with Shading 0.3. Bring Size down to 10 for a finer cloth that sits quietly behind text.
Folk border: Folk diamonds at Size 12, red #b3202a on #f6efe0. A single motif is eight stitches square, so 96 pixels at that Size. Raise Size to 20 if you'd like fewer, bigger diamonds.
How do I make the cloth slide in a seamless loop?
Speed is measured in threads per second, and every weave repeats after a fixed number of threads: Basket after 2, Twill after 4, Herringbone and Folk diamonds after 8, Cross-hatch and Dot lattice after 1. Divide that number by Speed and you've got a clip length in seconds that loops. Twill at Speed 1, for example, comes back around every 4 seconds.
Saving a woven texture
Shading puts a gradient on every thread, so a shaded weave contains lots of shades. Keep GIF's Dither ticked or save as MP4. With Shading at 0, the cloth is two flat colors, and GIF or PNG store it exactly.
For cross-stitch made from a photo, look at the stitch effects on the Pixel Art & Mosaic Effects hub. Plain stripes and checks in two colors are in Pattern Generator.