Turnstone

What it does

Turnstone designs tablet-woven bands (card weaving). Thread the cards, choose how they turn, and see both faces of the band at once, every stitch leaning the way its threads really twist. Then weave it pick by pick with a guide that tells you which cards to turn.

From threading to a finished band

• Threaded-in patterns. Paint each card's four holes, flip a card between S and Z, and pick a turning sequence: forward only, 4 forward 4 back, 8 and 8, or 16 and 16. Diamonds, chevrons and borders appear as you thread.
• Both faces. The back is shown too, turned over as you would see it, smooth where it should be smooth and jagged where it should be jagged.
• Pictures and names. Draw a two-colour picture, or type a name or a motto, and Turnstone writes every card's turns as double-face, or as 3/1 broken twill by the one-pack method. It tells you if a square can't be woven. The lettering is Turnstone's own pixel font: Latin letters with their accents, Cyrillic and Greek.
• The weaving guide. One pick at a time: which cards turn forward, which turn back, and which hole should be at the top afterwards, so a slip is caught at once. Space goes on, the left arrow goes back, the screen stays awake, and packs of 60 to 120 cards are shown 8 cards at a time.
• Twist and warp. The twist meter says when to reverse. The warp calculator works out band length, take-up and loom waste for an inkle loom, backstrap or box loom, with a cut list per colour and the band's width.
• Private. No account, no tracking, no network. Your designs stay on your Mac.

Share and print

• Images. A band card, a name band and a pattern sheet.
• Time-lapse. A short video of the band being woven.
• Pattern sheet PDF. Threading, turning chart and cut list, on A4 or Letter.
• Loom tags. Printable labels for every card.

Free, and one purchase

Free: threaded-in designs up to 24 cards with both faces, the weaving guide, the twist meter, the warp length, sharing images and video, and three saved designs.

Turnstone Unlock, bought once, adds pictures and names as double-face or 3/1 twill, up to 120 cards, unlimited designs, the cut list per colour, the PDF pattern sheet and the loom tags. No subscription, no ads.