Why does it refuse some totals?

Because some totals cannot be reached from the widths you allow. Stripes of 4 and 6 rows always add up to an even number, so 125 rows is impossible, and quietly planning 124 would leave you a row out without saying so. The page names the nearest totals that do work instead.

Why can two touching stripes never be the same colour?

Two stripes of the same colour side by side are one stripe. A plan that listed them separately would be stating widths the finished piece does not have, which is exactly the kind of mistake that makes a pattern hard to follow.

Can I use this for weaving or sewing?

Yes. A row here is any whole unit: a pick of weft, a group of warp threads, or a strip of fabric in a sewn panel. Use rows per 10 cm for whatever that unit is in your work.

How accurate is the yarn estimate?

As accurate as the swatch figure. It divides each colour's area into 10 cm squares and multiplies by the metres one square uses, then adds the allowance. Weigh or unravel a real swatch for that figure, and keep the allowance for ends and joins.

Stripe Pattern Planner

A striped piece is a sequence of decisions — how wide each stripe is, which colour comes next, whether the pattern repeats — and every one of them has to come out right at the end, when the rows run out. This plans the whole sequence under the rules you set: only the stripe widths you allow, only your colours, no colour ever next to itself, and an exact number of identical repeats or a piece that reads the same from both ends. It checks that the stripes really do add up before it shows them, and when what you asked for cannot add up — 125 rows from stripes of 4 and 6 rows, say — it says so and gives the nearest totals that would work. With your gauge it turns rows into centimetres, and with one figure from a swatch it estimates the yarn for each colour, showing exactly what that estimate rests on.

Colours (2 to 10)

Colour A name

Colour A swatch

Colour B name

Colour B swatch

Colour C name

Colour C swatch

Size the piece by

Rows in the whole piece

2 to 2000. Rows, rounds, picks or strips — whatever one unit of your stripes is.

Allowed stripe widths (rows)

Whole rows, separated by commas; a range like 2-6 is every width in it.

Identical repeats

1 for no repeat. The rows must divide evenly between them.

Colour order

Mirror the piece end to end

Work out lengths from my gauge

Seed (optional)

The same seed and settings give the same plan again while the generator is unchanged, to reprint it or share it. It is a repeat word, not a secret, and is not cryptographic.

Paper size

Print size

Margin

Millimetres of blank edge, 5 to 40.

Turn the paper sideways

How to print this, or save it as a PDF

There is no PDF to download, and there does not need to be. Open the print command in your browser and choose “Save as PDF” as the destination. The page addresses and dates a browser normally prints across the top and bottom are already kept off.
Set the scale to 100%, not “fit to page”. This sheet is already the exact size of the paper you chose, so anything that resizes it makes every measurement on it wrong.
Leave the paper size in the dialog set to the same one you chose here.

The stripe plan will appear here.

What this generator does

Turns a handful of rules into a complete stripe sequence and the arithmetic that goes with it: how many rows each colour gets, in how many stripes, how long that is at your gauge, and roughly how much yarn. The knitting gauge calculator answers how many rows a length needs, and that is the same arithmetic used here for the lengths; it does not plan stripes. The colour palette generator suggests colours that go together; it does not decide how wide anything is. This is the step between choosing the colours and casting on.

How to use this tool

Name your colours and pick a swatch for each, so the plan looks roughly like the yarn.
Give the size in rows, or switch to length and enter your rows per 10 cm.
Type the stripe widths you are happy with — 2, 4, 6, 8, or a range such as 2-6.
Choose a colour order, and whether the sequence repeats or mirrors end to end.
Press Plan the stripes. Read the check line, then the colour table and the row-by-row list.
Print the plan, or download it as SVG, CSV or JSON to keep with the project.

Understanding the controls

Colours: Two to ten, each with a name and a swatch. The swatch is only for the picture: the plan never depends on what colour a swatch is, only on which name is which. Every stripe is also marked with its colour's key letter, so the plan still reads when printed in black and white.
Size the piece by: Rows plans exactly the number you type. Length takes centimetres and your rows per 10 cm, rounds to the nearest whole row, and says how many rows that came to before planning — so the plan is for a whole number of rows, never a fraction.
Allowed stripe widths: The widths every stripe must be one of. This is a hard rule: a stripe of 5 never appears when only 2, 4 and 6 are allowed. Even widths only means the whole piece has to be an even number of rows, and the page will say so rather than quietly adding one.
Identical repeats: Splits the rows into that many equal parts with the same stripe sequence in each. The seam between two repeats is checked like any other join, so the last stripe of a repeat is never the colour the next repeat starts with — otherwise the two would knit up as one stripe twice as wide.
Colour order: Random draws each stripe's colour from those that are not the colour just used. Balanced does the same but always picks from the colours with the fewest rows so far, which keeps the totals close; the result says how close. In order cycles through your list as written.
Mirror the piece end to end: Plans half the stripes, one middle stripe, then the same half backwards, so the piece reads the same from either end. It cannot be combined with repeats, because the end stripe of one mirrored repeat would land against the identical end stripe of the next.
Gauge, width and swatch metres: All optional. Rows per 10 cm gives each colour's length; the width of the piece gives its area; metres used by a 10 cm square of your fabric turns that area into a yarn estimate, with the allowance added on top.
Seed (optional): The same seed and the same settings give the same plan again while the generator is unchanged, so it can be reprinted halfway through a blanket. It repeats a plan and keeps nothing secret; it is not cryptographic.

Worked examples

Three colours, 120 rows, widths 2, 4, 6 and 8, random order — seed harbour: 26 stripes starting Teal 2, Cream 2, Teal 4, Rust 6, Teal 4, Cream 2. Teal ends with 44 rows in 9 stripes, Cream 34 in 8 and Rust 42 in 9 — unbalanced, because nothing asked for balance.
The same with Balanced chosen — seed harbour: Still 26 stripes, now Teal 38, Cream 44 and Rust 38 rows. The report says the most- and least-used colours differ by 6 rows, against a widest stripe of 8.
Two colours in six identical repeats — seed harbour: Each repeat is 20 rows in 6 stripes, alternating Cream and Teal, so the last stripe of a repeat is always the opposite colour to the first stripe of the next. Teal gets 72 rows in 18 stripes, Cream 48 in 18.
With a gauge of 28 rows per 10 cm, 80 cm wide, 10 m per 10 cm square, 10% allowance — seed harbour: 120 rows is 42.9 cm. The yarn estimate is Teal 138 m, Cream 107 m and Rust 132 m — 377 m in all, which is 34.3 swatch squares of 10 m plus the 10%.
Asking for something impossible: 125 rows from stripes of 4 and 6 rows: refused, because every total from those widths is even. The nearest totals that work are 124 and 126 rows.

Common use cases

A baby blanket in three colours where no stripe should touch another of the same colour and the yarn has to last
A scarf that should look the same at both ends when it is worn
A jumper body knitted in identical stripe repeats so the back and front can be matched at the seams
A warp or weft stripe plan for a weaving, counted in picks or threads instead of rows
Using up leftovers: deciding how many rows each colour can have before it runs out

How this generator works

Before anything is drawn the request is tested exactly. Whether a number of rows can be cut into the allowed widths is a question about sums, so a table of every total from zero upwards records which ones can be reached and with how many stripes; if the rows you asked for cannot be reached the page refuses and searches the table for the nearest totals that can. Two colour rules change that question. Two colours alternating round a repeat need an even number of stripes in each repeat, and colours used in order round a repeat must not end on the colour they started with, so for those the table also tracks the count of stripes. Once the request is known to work, each stripe's width is drawn evenly from the widths that still leave a way to finish exactly, and the widths are then shuffled so the constrained ones near the end are spread through the piece. Colours are drawn stripe by stripe from the colours that do not match the one before, and for a repeat the last stripe also may not match the first. A mirrored piece is half a sequence, a middle stripe, and the half reversed. Finally the plan is checked from the finished stripes alone: the rows are added up, every width compared with the allowed list, every touching pair compared, repeats compared stripe for stripe and a mirror end for end, and the colour totals recounted.

Randomness and fairness

Chance decides the widths and colours within your rules and nothing else; whether a request is possible, the totals, the lengths and the yarn estimate are all worked out from the finished plan. Widths are drawn evenly from those that still fit, which is not the same as every possible plan being equally likely — a narrower width is no more likely to be chosen than a wider one at each step. The draw uses your browser's cryptographic random source unless you type a seed, which replaces it with a repeatable sequence.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

A stripe is a whole number of rows (or rounds, picks or strips) in a single colour, running all the way across the piece.
The yarn estimate assumes the whole piece is one fabric at one gauge. Your swatch figure is taken as given; a swatch knitted at a different tension makes every figure wrong by the same proportion.
Colour names are what make colours different. Two colours with the same name are refused, and two different names with the same swatch are treated as different colours.

Limitations and good to know

Stripes run in one direction only. Plaids, checks and vertical stripes worked in intarsia or stranded colourwork are different structures and are not planned here.
The yarn estimate covers the striped fabric only — not ribbing, borders, seams, fringes or tassels — and depends entirely on the swatch figure you give it.
Balanced keeps colours close but cannot always make them equal: stripes come in whole allowed widths and two touching stripes must differ, so the page reports the actual spread rather than promising one.
The piece is at most 2,000 rows, with up to twenty allowed widths, ten colours and fifty repeats.
It does not know which colours look good together, or how a colour will pool or stripe on its own if the yarn is variegated.

Common mistakes

Planning in rows from a gauge measured before blocking: Measure rows per 10 cm on a swatch treated the way the finished piece will be. Many fabrics grow or shrink in length when washed, and the stripes' lengths change with them.
Expecting the colours to come out even without asking: Random means random within the rules. Choose Balanced if each colour has a fixed amount of yarn, and read the reported spread.
Adding repeats and then changing the total: The total must divide by the repeats. 120 rows divide into 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 repeats; 121 rows into none of those, and the page says which totals would.

Practical tips

Write the plan's seed on the ball band of the first colour; if the printout goes missing halfway through, the same seed and settings rebuild it for as long as this tool is unchanged.
Allowing a 1-row width makes almost any total possible, but a single row of a contrast colour looks broken in some stitches; 2 rows is the narrowest stripe many patterns use.
Carrying yarn up the side is easier with even-row stripes, because each colour returns to the same edge.

Privacy and your data

The plan is made entirely in your browser. Nothing you type — colour names, the seed, any measurement — is stored, sent anywhere or included in usage counts, which record only that a plan was made and how many stripes it had.

Frequently asked questions

Why does it refuse some totals?: Because some totals cannot be reached from the widths you allow. Stripes of 4 and 6 rows always add up to an even number, so 125 rows is impossible, and quietly planning 124 would leave you a row out without saying so. The page names the nearest totals that do work instead.
Why can two touching stripes never be the same colour?: Two stripes of the same colour side by side are one stripe. A plan that listed them separately would be stating widths the finished piece does not have, which is exactly the kind of mistake that makes a pattern hard to follow.
Can I use this for weaving or sewing?: Yes. A row here is any whole unit: a pick of weft, a group of warp threads, or a strip of fabric in a sewn panel. Use rows per 10 cm for whatever that unit is in your work.
How accurate is the yarn estimate?: As accurate as the swatch figure. It divides each colour's area into 10 cm squares and multiplies by the metres one square uses, then adds the allowance. Weigh or unravel a real swatch for that figure, and keep the allowance for ends and joins.