Can a gradient blend more than two colors?

Yes. Select two or more colors in your palette (Cmd/Ctrl+click to add them one at a time, or Shift+click for a range) and the gradient blends all of them in selection order, from the start of your drag to the end. Up to 32 colors are supported.

How does a gradient work if a stitch can only be one color?

It dithers. A stitch is always a single solid thread color, so the gradient scatters stitches of the two nearest colors in a fine pattern, with more of one and fewer of the other as you move along the blend. Stand back and your eye reads it as a smooth transition.

Which end of my drag is which color?

The first color in your palette selection sits at the start of the drag and the last sits at the end. For a plain two-color gradient, Secondary is at the start and Primary at the end. Hold Alt while dragging to flip it.

Can I control where the middle colors sit?

Yes. Click the ramp chip in the tool options to open the stop editor, then drag the sliders to move any middle color earlier or later in the blend. The first and last colors stay pinned to the ends of your drag.

Why does nothing happen when I click without dragging?

A gradient needs a direction and a distance, so short drags are ignored on purpose. Drag at least a short distance across the canvas and the preview appears.

Does the gradient replace my whole pattern?

It fills the whole pattern unless you have an active selection, in which case it stays inside the selection. Make a selection first if you only want to shade part of your design.

Gradient Tool

Blend two or more thread colors across a region. Drag to set direction, pick as many palette colors as you like, and let dithering do the shading.

Location: Left toolbar → Fill dropdown → Gradient

Keyboard & modifiers

Shift (while dragging, Linear): Snap the gradient angle to 15° increments
Shift (while dragging, Radial): Force a perfect circle instead of an ellipse
Alt (while dragging): Invert the gradient direction
Right-click drag: Erase with a gradient falloff
Space: Pan the canvas

Basics

Gradient Tool blends thread colors across a region — sky fading to horizon, a petal shading from deep to pale, a background that isn't flat.

Gradient Tool — blending thread colors across a region

Use it for:

Skies, water, and backgrounds that would look dead as a single color.
Shading petals, fabric folds, and fur.
Softening a hard edge between two color areas.
Any place you'd otherwise be hand-placing dozens of stitches to fake a fade.

It lives in the Fill dropdown in the left toolbar, next to Flood Fill.

Quick start

Open the Fill dropdown and choose Gradient.
Pick your colors — Primary and Secondary for a simple blend, or Cmd/Ctrl+click several palette colors for a multi-color one.
Click where the blend should start and drag to where it should end.
Hold Shift for a straight angle, Alt to flip the direction.
Release to apply.

How blending works

A stitch is one solid thread color. You can't mix floss in a square the way you'd mix paint — so a gradient can't fade a color the way a screen does.

Instead it dithers. The tool scatters stitches of the two nearest colors in a fine, even pattern: mostly the first color at the start of the blend, mostly the second at the end, and a progressively shifting mix in between.

Close up — the fine scatter that reads as a smooth fade from a distance

Up close you see individual stitches. From normal viewing distance your eye blends them, exactly like it does on a stitched piece. This is the same technique cross-stitchers have always used by hand for shading — the tool just does the counting.

Tip: Judge a gradient zoomed out, not zoomed in. Up close every gradient looks speckled. That's what it's supposed to look like.

Two colors: primary and secondary

With a Primary and a Secondary color set, a gradient blends between them:

Secondary sits at the start of your drag.
Primary sits at the end.

Hold Alt while dragging to swap which end is which.

A two-color gradient — drag start to drag end

More than two colors

A gradient isn't limited to two colors. Select two or more colors in your palette and the gradient blends all of them, in the order you selected them, spread evenly from the start of your drag to the end.

Two ways to build the selection:

Cmd/Ctrl+click colors one at a time. They're added in click order — so the order you click is the order they appear in the blend.
Shift+click for a range. If your palette is sorted by color family, a single Shift+drag across a run of shades gives you a ready-made ramp.

When two or more colors are selected, a ramp chip appears in the tool options showing the colors in order. While it's there, the gradient uses the ramp instead of Primary and Secondary, and the swatches are hidden so there's only one thing telling you what a drag will paint.

Selecting four palette shades and blending them in one drag

While you drag, the direction arrow is drawn in the ramp's own colors, so you can see the order before you commit.

Click the ✕ on the chip to clear the selection and go back to Primary and Secondary. Up to 32 colors can be used in one ramp.

Tip: This is what thread shade families are for. Pick four or five neighboring shades from one DMC family, select them light-to-dark, and drag — you get a shaded blend using floss you'd actually buy together.

Adjusting stop positions

By default the colors are spread evenly along the blend. Click the ramp chip to open the stop editor and change that.

The stop editor — moving a middle color later in the blend

Inside:

A preview bar showing where each color sits.
A slider per middle color — drag it to move that color earlier or later in the blend. The first and last colors stay pinned to the ends of your drag, so the ramp always spans the full distance.
Reverse — flip the whole ramp end to end, keeping the spacing.
Even — reset everything back to equal spacing.

Move a color's position to give it more or less of the blend. Pushing a dark shade late, for example, keeps an area light for longer and then drops quickly into shadow.

Two things worth knowing:

Position changes apply to your next drag — the editor isn't reachable mid-drag, so use the preview bar in the panel to judge them.
If you change your palette selection, positions reset to even. They're remembered for the exact set of colors they were set on, not carried over to a different one.

Linear vs radial

Set from the gradient type dropdown in the tool options.

Linear — the blend runs in a straight line along your drag. For skies, horizons, and directional shading.
Radial — the blend spreads outward from where you started the drag. For glows, spheres, sunsets, and anything lit from a point.

Linear and radial from the same drag

With Radial, your drag sets the size of the spread rather than a direction. Hold Shift to force a perfect circle instead of an ellipse.

Repeat modes

Controls what happens beyond the ends of your drag.

Normal — the blend runs once and holds the end colors beyond it. This is what you want most of the time.
Repeat — the blend tiles over and over: start to end, start to end.
Mirror — the blend bounces back and forth, so it stays continuous with no hard seam where it restarts.

Normal, Repeat, and Mirror across the same region

Repeat and Mirror turn a short drag into banding and stripes. Combine Mirror with a two-color ramp for even, seamless bands.

Modifiers

Modifier	When	What it does
Shift (Linear)	During drag	Snap the angle to 15° increments — the arrow snaps with it
Shift (Radial)	During drag	Force a perfect circle instead of an ellipse
Alt	During drag	Invert the blend — swap which end is which color
Right-click drag	Any time	Erase with a gradient falloff instead of painting
Space	Any time	Pan the canvas

Fading out and erasing

With no Secondary color set and no palette selection, a gradient fades a single color out into nothing. Stitches thin out along the blend and the empty areas are left exactly as they were — nothing underneath gets overwritten. Good for softening the edge of a filled area into an existing background.

Right-click drag, or turn on the global eraser, and the same falloff erases instead: heaviest clearing at one end, untouched at the other. Handy for fading out a background you've decided against.

Erasing ignores the multi-color ramp — there's no meaningful way to blend several colors into nothing — so the ramp chip hides while the eraser is on.

Working with selections

Without a selection, a gradient fills the whole pattern. With an active selection, it stays inside the selection and everything outside is protected.

Select first, then drag. This is the usual way to shade one area — a single petal, one patch of sky — without touching the rest of the design.

The whole gradient, however large, is a single Undo step.

Common uses

Sky: Select the sky area, pick three or four blues light-to-dark, drag top to bottom.
Sunset glow: Radial, warm shades ordered bright-to-dark, drag outward from the sun.
Shading a shape: Select the shape, then drag across it in the direction of the light.
Softening a hard edge: Single color with no Secondary, short drag across the boundary.
Textured bands: Two colors with Mirror repeat and a short drag.

Tips & gotchas

Short drags do nothing. A gradient needs a direction and a distance. Drag a bit further and the preview appears.
Selection order is blend order. Cmd/Ctrl+click builds the ramp in the order you click, so click light-to-dark (or dark-to-light) deliberately.
The chip shows what will happen. If it's on screen, the ramp is what a drag will paint — not Primary and Secondary.
Palette selection is shared. The same multi-select drives Merge and Remap. If a gradient looks unexpectedly colorful, you may have a selection left over from another job — clear it with the ✕.
Zoom out to judge. Dithering always looks speckled up close.
More colors is not always better. With many stops each color gets a short stretch of the blend and the transitions get busy. Three to five shades usually reads best.
Shades from one family blend cleanest. Neighboring shades of the same floss color dither into a smooth run; distant colors read as speckle rather than shading.
Make a selection first unless you genuinely want the gradient across the entire pattern.
One Undo. However big the blend, Cmd/Ctrl+Z removes all of it.