What are confetti stitches?

Confetti stitches are lonely speckles — single stitches surrounded by different colors. They make a pattern harder to stitch because every isolated stitch means starting and stopping a thread, instead of stitching a continuous run.

What is the difference between Brush mode and Auto mode?

Brush mode is real-time: you drag over confetti and it blends into surrounding colors instantly, one stroke at a time. Auto mode is a batch pass: you adjust a strength slider, preview the result across the entire pattern (or selection), and click Apply to commit everything at once.

Does cleaning up confetti affect the FLOW score?

Yes. The F (Fragmentation) in FLOW directly measures confetti. Cleaning confetti raises the F score, and since Fragmentation is weighted heavily in FLOW, even a small cleanup can noticeably improve your overall score.

What does ConfettiScope show?

ConfettiScope is a heatmap overlay that reveals confetti density across your pattern. Lonely stitches glow yellow (hot), nearly-isolated ones glow magenta, borderline stitches glow cyan, and clean areas are invisible. The pattern fades underneath so the hotspots stand out.

Confetti Cleanup Tool

Basics

Confetti are those tiny lone stitches that break up clean areas and make stitching annoying. This tool merges those speckles into nearby colors — either by brushing them away live, or by running a previewable Auto cleanup.

Confetti Cleanup overview — brush away speckles, toggle ConfettiScope

Core workflows:

Brush mode: Scrub over speckles and they blend into the surrounding area. Each stroke = one Undo step.
Auto mode: Choose strength, preview the result, then Apply or Cancel.
Mask (Auto only): Paint where cleanup is allowed — protect faces, text, or fine details.
ConfettiScope (Shift+C): Heatmap that reveals hotspots across the whole pattern.

Brush mode

Real-time cleanup. Drag over speckles and they blend into the surrounding area.

Strength (10–100%) controls how bold the cleanup is: lower = only the most obvious speckles, higher = more aggressive smoothing.

Brush size (1–20 stitches) sets how wide your scrub is. Change with W / S or [ / ].

Each stroke becomes one Undo step, so you can experiment freely.

Brush mode — drag over speckles, they blend into neighbors

Pro tip: Start around 50%. If speckles remain, bump it up. Jumping straight to 100% can soften tiny details you might want to keep.

Auto mode

Batch cleanup with a live preview. Adjust Strength (0–100%), watch the preview update, then Apply or Cancel.

The stats panel shows what will change before you commit:

Confetti: before → after (after count highlighted in green).
Stitches changed: how many stitches will be recolored.
Areas affected: how many speckled patches got cleaned up.

Auto mode runs on the whole pattern by default. If you have an active selection, it only cleans inside it (you'll see an indicator).

Auto mode — slide strength, preview stats, Apply

Nothing is permanent until you click Apply. Closing the panel or switching tools throws the preview away.

Mask painting

Mask is for "clean here, not there."

Turn on Draw mask and paint a red overlay. Only masked stitches will be affected when you click Apply.

Add / Erase: Paint mask or erase it.
Brush size: 1–20 stitches (W/S or [ / ]).
Show / Hide: Hide the overlay while keeping it active.

Every time you paint or erase the mask, the preview recalculates automatically.

Mask painting — paint the areas you want cleaned, preview updates

Pro tip: Mask the background and leave faces or text unmasked, so Auto can't blur those details.

ConfettiScope

ConfettiScope is your "thermal vision" for pattern mess. Toggle with Shift+C to see a heatmap of confetti density.

Color	What it means
Yellow (hot)	Fully isolated — no matching neighbors
Magenta (medium)	Nearly isolated — one matching neighbor
Cyan (cool)	Borderline — a few neighbors, might be fine
Invisible	Clean — no issues

When it's on, the pattern fades slightly so hotspots pop. Stats show confetti % and isolated stitch count.

ConfettiScope active — heatmap over a faded pattern

ConfettiScope lives in the Check tab of the right panel. It stays on even when you switch tools, so you can clean with Brush or another tool and watch hotspots disappear in real time.

FLOW score & Fragmentation

The F in FLOW stands for Fragmentation — basically, "how speckled is this pattern?"

Even a small amount of confetti can make stitching feel fussy, so Fragmentation is weighted heavily in the FLOW score. Clean up speckles → Fragmentation improves → FLOW climbs. It's often the fastest win for overall pattern quality.

Rule of thumb:

F below 60: Noticeably speckled — will feel annoying to stitch.
F below 40: Heavy confetti — expect frustration.

In Auto mode, the FLOW score updates live as you move the strength slider. You can watch the number climb.

FLOW score improving as Auto strength increases

How cleanup decides what to fix

A stitch counts as confetti when it looks "alone" compared to what surrounds it. Cleanup replaces lonely stitches with a nearby color that fits the area best.

Brush mode is simpler and more direct — great for targeted touch-ups. Auto mode is smarter about preserving sharp edges and meaningful color boundaries, even at higher strength settings.

Under the hood

Detection: The tool checks all 8 neighbors (including diagonals) for each stitch. Brush mode uses simple neighbor counting against the strength threshold. Auto mode uses stability scoring that considers region connectivity, diagonal weighting, and contrast boundaries — high-contrast edges are preserved even at high strength.

Replacement color: Both modes pick the most common neighboring color (excluding the stitch's own color). Tiebreaker: the largest connected region wins, so replacements blend naturally into the dominant surrounding area.

Brush strength mapping: 10–30% replaces only fully isolated stitches (0 same-color neighbors), 40–60% catches nearly-isolated ones too, 70–90% reaches moderately fragmented stitches, and 100% catches almost everything that's not in a solid block.

Fragmentation formula: F = 100 × e^(−isolation% × 0.15). Even 5% isolation → F ≈ 47, 10% → F ≈ 22. Fragmentation carries 30% weight in the FLOW composite.

UI overview

Left toolbar: Clean Up Confetti button.
Mode switch: Brush / Auto at the top of the panel.
Brush panel: Strength slider, brush size.
Auto panel: Strength slider, stats display, Apply / Cancel.
Mask controls (Auto only): Draw mask, Show mask, mask color.
ConfettiScope: Right panel Check tab — toggle and stats.

Confetti Cleanup panel — Brush and Auto modes

Brush — for manual painting and color placement.
FLOW Score — the quality metric that directly reflects confetti cleanup progress.

Tips & gotchas

Brush is instant — no Apply button. Each stroke commits and creates an Undo step.
Auto needs Apply to commit. Closing the panel or switching tools discards the preview.
Mask only affects Auto. In Brush mode, you paint directly on the canvas.
ConfettiScope works everywhere. Toggle it with Shift+C regardless of which tool is active.
Auto tries to keep sharp color boundaries intact, even at higher strength — but always verify the preview.
Strength ≠ brush size. Strength controls how aggressively speckles are replaced; brush size controls the area you scrub.
Start gentle, iterate. Apply at 30%, check the result, Undo, try 50%. Going straight to 100% might over-simplify.
Auto respects selections. If you have an active selection, only stitches inside it are affected.