--- title: "The pattern is designed for satin stitch, not for the screen" locale: "en" url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/hanaito-algorithme-broderie-en" markdown_url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/hanaito-algorithme-broderie-en.md" category: "craft" tags: ["embroidery", "algorithm", "natural dye", "generative design", "fabrication"] published_at: "2026-08-23T16:40:00.000Z" author: "Camille Morel" translation: "https://irz.fr/fr/articles/hanaito-algorithme-broderie-fr.md" --- # The pattern is designed for satin stitch, not for the screen HANAITO uses a digital tool to compose flowers, but the pattern is judged by what satin stitch does to it: volume, shine and material. A flower enters the workshop. It is boiled into dye. The thread takes on its colour, and another machine turns that thread back into a flower. In between, an algorithm tries not to forget that the drawing will end up under a needle. That is the starting point of HANAITO, a project by Hiromasa Fukaji made with Tajima Industries and documented in a making-of film produced by MON Design.[1](https://mondesign.co.jp/works/detail/92?lang=en) The name joins *hana*, flower, and *ito*, thread. The interesting part is not simply that the pattern is generated by a computer. It is that the computer has to draw for a specific textile technique: satin stitch. ## Drawing under constraint Satin stitch fills a shape with tight, parallel threads. It creates volume and a glossy surface whose appearance shifts with the light.[2](https://www.designboom.com/art/embroidered-flowers-botanical-dyed-threads-digital-algorithms-hanaito-hiromasa-fukaji/) A line that looks elegant on a screen can become too dense, too flat or unreadable once it turns into a sequence of stitches. Fukaji built a custom digital tool to compose the floral patterns. The flowers are made from overlapping lines, with very small changes in width and trajectory.[2](https://www.designboom.com/art/embroidered-flowers-botanical-dyed-threads-digital-algorithms-hanaito-hiromasa-fukaji/) The tool’s output only makes sense once those lines have survived the trip into thread, so the screen image is closer to a working drawing than a finished object. That difference changes the algorithm’s role. In many generative images, computation stays on the composition side and material arrives later as a support; here, thread is part of the drawing’s grammar from the beginning, with shine, volume and stitch direction acting as design parameters rather than finishing effects. > Illustration: HANAITO floral pattern made from overlapping stitched lines. The pattern is composed around what satin stitch does, not only around how it looks on screen. Credit: [Hiromasa Fukaji (DIGRAPH) / Designboom](https://www.designboom.com/art/embroidered-flowers-botanical-dyed-threads-digital-algorithms-hanaito-hiromasa-fukaji/). ## A flower becomes thread The colour takes another route. The threads are dyed with real flower petals: a flower becomes a dye bath, the thread takes its colour, and the coloured thread returns as a floral image on cloth.[2](https://www.designboom.com/art/embroidered-flowers-botanical-dyed-threads-digital-algorithms-hanaito-hiromasa-fukaji/) Maito Design Works describes botanical dyeing more broadly as the hands-on transfer of nature’s colours onto materials.[4](https://maitokomuro.com/en/natural_dye/) The cycle describes a material change, not merely a poetic detail in the project description. A flower’s colour arrives as real dye, with variations and limits that no slider can smooth away before the thread reaches the embroidery machine. The project therefore contains two kinds of translation: code turns a floral idea into stitch paths, dye turns a flower into colour, and Tajima turns those instructions and threads into a textile surface. Each stage removes some control and adds a constraint for the next stage to absorb. ## A machine, its rules Tajima is the embroidery technology manufacturer involved in materialising the work, with a catalogue spanning commercial machines, embroidery software and design-reproducibility solutions.[3](https://www.tajima.com/) In HANAITO, that technology makes precise execution possible while leaving the translation problem in view. MON’s making-of page explicitly describes the project as a collaboration between computational design, embroidery technology and threads dyed with real flower petals.[1](https://mondesign.co.jp/works/detail/92?lang=en) MON shows neither the program driving the patterns, nor the machine’s full settings, nor a reproducible procedure; a recipe would therefore go beyond the available evidence. What we can say is more useful than an imaginary technical sheet: the pattern was developed with the embroidery technique in mind, rather than simply exported to it. The result shows a workflow in which the fabrication tool becomes a rule of composition. ## Software looks at thread HANAITO offers a concrete version of generative design. The algorithm does not replace the choice of motif, the eye that evaluates satin stitch or the people handling the dye. It creates a space of variations, while the project remains a chain of material decisions. That may be the transferable lesson. When a drawing is meant for a machine, modelling only the visible result is not enough. You have to model what the machine can actually do: stitch width, line overlap, the way light moves across the surface and the colour that really comes out of the dye. The code draws with the embroiderer’s machine in mind. That distinction may amount to a few millimetres of thread, but it changes the whole practice. ## References 1. [MON Design, HANAITO Making Movie](https://mondesign.co.jp/works/detail/92?lang=en) 2. [Designboom, embroidered flowers bloom from botanical-dyed threads and digital algorithms](https://www.designboom.com/art/embroidered-flowers-botanical-dyed-threads-digital-algorithms-hanaito-hiromasa-fukaji/) 3. [Tajima Industries, official site](https://www.tajima.com/) 4. [Maito Design Works, natural dyeing](https://maitokomuro.com/en/natural_dye/)