A beading project often begins with a small idea: a color combination, a repeating motif, or a bracelet you can already imagine. Turning that idea into a usable pattern and then following it accurately while working.
Bead Designer section in Knitting Row Counter brings the complete process into Knitting Row Counter. You can create and edit patterns, experiment with colors, preview the finished piece, follow the design row by row, and prepare printable instructions without moving between several different tools.
Design for popular beadwork techniques
Bead Designer supports:
- Loom
- Peyote 1-Drop
- Peyote 2-Drop
- Brick 1-Drop
- Brick 2-Drop
Each technique uses its own properly arranged canvas, including the staggered structure needed by Peyote and Brick Stitch.
You can begin with a blank design, choose an editable design from the ready-pattern library, or import an image as the starting point for a new pattern.
Many cylinder and round bead profiles are available, and the app provides an approximate finished size based on the selected bead type, technique, and design dimensions.
Practical drawing and editing tools
The design canvas includes familiar tools for creating and refining bead patterns:
- Pencil, paint bucket, eraser, and eyedropper
- Undo and redo
- Transparent cells for gaps and open areas
- Row and column fill or clear actions
- Grid and numbering controls
- Smooth panning, zooming, and fit-to-screen
- Design resizing and structure-aware shifting
- Vertical repeat for creating repeating patterns more quickly
The eyedropper selects a color already used in the design and brings it into view in the project palette, making it easy to continue drawing with the same bead.
Colors and your personal bead collection
Use the built-in searchable bead-color catalog or create entries for beads from your own collection.
A personal bead entry can include:
- Bead name
- Color or reference code
- Brand
- Custom RGB color
Colors can be selected visually or entered directly. You can also adjust a bead’s displayed color later without breaking designs that already use it—helpful when a bead looks different under real light or when a new batch has a slightly different shade.
The color search supports names, codes, brands, groups, DB numbers, and hexadecimal RGB values. RGB searches can also suggest the closest available colors.
Preview color changes before applying them
The Change Colors screen makes it possible to replace, swap, merge, or remove colors throughout a design.
A live, zoomable preview shows how the new combination will look before you apply it. You can also change any existing color to transparent, allowing that color to be removed from the entire design in one step.
Select, transform, and reuse design areas
Area selection provides several ways to edit part of a pattern:
- Copy and move a selected area
- Fill or erase the entire selection
- Mirror it horizontally or vertically
- Rotate square selections in 90-degree steps
- Drag the result to a new location
Placement follows the structure of the selected technique and snaps automatically, helping copied areas remain aligned correctly on Peyote and Brick Stitch canvases.
Build a reusable Motif Library
Small selections can be saved as reusable motifs. This creates a persistent clipboard for frequently used flowers, hearts, borders, symbols, and other decorative details.
The Motif Library can store many motifs and motifs matching the current technique are shown first, and a selected motif appears in the visible canvas area ready to be dragged and placed.
Turn an image into an editable bead pattern
Import a photo or illustration and use it as the basis for a design. The image-transfer tools provide cropping, alignment, sampling, and color-count controls before mapping the image onto the bead canvas.
The result remains fully editable, so colors and individual beads can be adjusted afterward.
Preview designs in 2D and 3D
The unified preview screen offers both a clear flat view and a curved 3D presentation.
In 3D view, you can:
- Adjust the bend of the design
- Pan, zoom, and fit the preview
- Rotate bracelet-style loops to inspect different sides
- Drag directly to rotate highly curved designs
- Reset the view to its starting position
Follow your pattern in Work mode
When it is time to begin beading, Work mode turns the design into a guided working companion.
You can:
- Choose any starting corner
- Select a same or alternating working direction
- Move forward or backward through the pattern
- Keep the active row or pickup phase visible automatically
- Display optional color letters on the beads
- Show or hide the grid
- Reset progress when needed
Pickup instructions display the row number, working direction, color sequence, and bead quantities. Transparent positions are shown explicitly as “Gaps”, so intentional spaces never disappear silently from the instructions.
Peyote 1-Drop and Peyote 2-Drop also support Normal and Speed modes. Speed mode groups the corresponding Peyote pickup phases into a single guided action for users who prefer that working method.
Work progress, starting position, direction, and Peyote mode are saved with each design, so when you return weaving you will continue your pattern without any problem.
Create printable PDF instructions
Bead Designer can create structured instruction documents in A4 or US Letter format.
Depending on your chosen settings, a PDF can include:
- Design and size information
- Creator name or brand
- A short custom note
- Optional pattern preview
- Bead List with color quantities
- Optional bead reference codes
- Numbered printable pattern
- Starting-corner marker
- Optional bead letters
- Row-by-row pickup instructions
- Checkboxes for marking completed rows
- Page numbers and a branded footer
Starting corner, direction, and Peyote mode can be configured specifically for the document without changing the project’s saved Work settings.
Keep growing design collections organized
Bead Home helps keep larger collections manageable.
Designs can be:
- Searched by name
- Marked with colored labels
- Filtered by label color
- Edited
- Duplicated
- Deleted
Colored labels are intentionally flexible: use them for active projects, favorite techniques, commissions, gifts, finished designs, or any system that suits your workflow.
From the first idea to the final row
Bead Designer is designed to support the complete beadwork journey: creating a pattern, exploring color combinations, previewing the result, organizing projects, following each working step, and preparing clear printable instructions.
Whether you are planning a quick bracelet for yourself or preparing a polished pattern to share, the entire project stays connected in one place—inside Knitting Row Counter.