Fill Tool

Basics

Fill is the paint bucket. Click once and a whole area of one color changes to your color: a background, the inside of an outline, a patch of sky. It's the fastest way to block in large shapes or recolor one area without dragging a brush over every stitch.

A fill is one undo step however many stitches it changes, so Cmd/Ctrl+Z puts it all back.

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Quick start

1. Pick a color in the palette.
2. Press G, or click Fill in the left toolbar.
3. Click inside the area you want to change.

Want to use a color that's already on the chart? Click it in the palette first. Painting with the Brush? Hold Cmd/Ctrl and click to fill without switching tools.

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How fill works

Fill starts at the stitch you click and spreads to every touching stitch of the same color, above, below, left and right. It stops at a different color or at the edge of the pattern.

Two things follow from that:

• Your outline has to be closed. A single missing stitch is enough for the color to escape and fill the background too. Stitches that touch only at a corner don't let it through, so a diagonal outline still holds.
• Similar isn't the same. Two shades that look identical on screen are still different colors, and the fill stops between them.

Fill looks at the exact mix in each stitch, so a checkerboard of DMC 310 and 3371 counts as its own color, separate from plain 310.

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Common uses

• Background: click the empty background to give it a fabric-colored or solid base.
• Inside an outline: draw the outline with the Brush or Line tool, then fill the inside.
• Recolor one area: click a block of one shade to swap it for another, leaving the same shade elsewhere alone if it isn't connected.
• Tidy a photo conversion: click small odd-colored patches to match their surroundings.

To change a color everywhere in the pattern, not just one connected area, use the palette instead; see Editing Colors.

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Filling within a selection

Sometimes the area you want to fill carries on into parts you want to keep, for example a sky that runs behind a tree. Contain it with a selection:

1. Draw a selection around the part you want to change.
2. Turn on Limit edits to selection in the selection tool's menu.
3. Click inside with Fill.

Only stitches inside the selection change, even where the same color continues outside. Without Limit edits to selection, a selection doesn't stop Fill.

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Fill density & eraser

The options bar sets what the fill puts down:

• Fill: Solid (the default) colors every stitch in the area. Checkerboard colors them at the density you pick and fills the rest with your secondary color, for a textured or two-color blend. If the secondary is the eraser, the gaps stay empty.
• Stitch fills with the stitch you choose, such as half stitches, instead of full crosses.
• Eraser clears the whole area instead of coloring it. Right-click, or Alt-click, does the same. Fill density doesn't apply when erasing: whole stitches are cleared.

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Tips & gotchas

• Filled too much? There's a gap in the outline. Undo, close the gap, and fill again, or contain it with a selection.
• Didn't fill enough? A stray stitch or a near-identical shade is blocking it. Zoom in at the edge.
• Right-click clears an area. It's the quickest way to empty a whole region at once.
• Fill works from the Brush. Hold Cmd/Ctrl and click.
• One undo for the whole fill, no matter how big.