I’ve been working on a project that I’d finally like to share more widely.

TattingCAD is a pattern design tool specifically made for needle and shuttle tatting.

I started this because general-purpose drawing programs aren’t really designed for tatting. Rings, chains, picots and joins have their own logic, and designing patterns with arbitrary lines and shapes can be unnecessarily tedious.

You can design patterns using actual tatting elements, work with rings, chains, split rings, picots, joins and beads, generate written notation from your diagram, and switch between schematic and realistic rendering.

Version 1.4.0 is now available, and this is the version I’m finally confident enough to introduce more widely.

A note about the development: TattingCAD was built with AI coding assistance. I’m a former game designer and crafter, not a software developer. I handled the design, specifications and development direction, working with AI through iterative sessions.

A few practical details:

• Free, and will stay free.
• No account, cloud services or trackers.
• Your patterns and settings stay on your device.
• Open source under the MIT license.

This is a fairly specialized tool, so feedback from fellow tatters is particularly valuable. Whether you’re a shuttle or needle tatter, beginner or experienced designer, feedback about usability, missing features or things that don’t behave as expected is welcome. If you try it, I’d particularly like to know whether the design workflow makes sense to someone who isn’t accustomed to CAD software.

Download: GitHub 1.4 Release
Website and FAQ: FAQ

Bug reports can go through GitHub Issues or even here in the comments if it’s easier.
**Other thoughts and suggestions are welcome too! **

If you’d like to support continued development, there’s a Ko-fi link on the website/GitHub. Completely optional, of course.