DIY Latchhook

Although my first latchhook was a storebought R2-D2 that kept my elementary school hands out of trouble for a while, I later decided to create my own designs.

Latchhook Triptych Triumvirate

Ideas for Creating the Latchhook Pattern

Originally I converted photographs to a size corresponding to the latchhook backing dimensions, and changed them to indexed images in Adobe Photoshop (reducing the color palette and selecting specific colors). Then I enlarged the image and transcribed line segments: 1-26 Red 27-43 Black 44-....

I keep looking for better ways. One way is to send the image through an ASCII-art generator, many of which allow you to select the number of characters/colors. However, this sometimes has unpredictable results.

I am hoping to build a tool that will automate this, from start to finish. The tool should do the following:

  1. Accept an image as input
  2. Resize the image to latchhook-friendly dimensions (e.g. no more than 126 pixels wide; this may not be "friendly" in terms of constructing it in a timely fashion, but at least you can put it together on a storebought latchhook backing)
  3. Accept a desired # of colors, or, better yet, add a color-picker
  4. Convert the image to grayscale
  5. Create color "buckets" -- either based on the number of colors, or the color picker
  6. For each pixel, set the color to the nearest bucket color
  7. Display product
  8. Calculate threads required for each color
  9. Print latchhok guide