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EFFY Cotton Blend Design Studio · A little help before you start

Your artwork.
Your yarn colours.

Bring your own artwork and explore EFFY cotton blend yarns. Flat colours and clear edges work best. The Design Studio suggests yarns for the colours it finds, then you choose the shades and combinations you like.

What works best?

Choose a crisp JPEG or PNG of the drawing itself, with solid areas of colour, a manageable number of shades and details large enough to tuft. These three examples show the difference.

Best starting point

Flat, clear artwork

Solid colours and distinct edges make the design easier to recognise and turn into yarn choices.

Needs simplifying

Shading, glare & texture

Photographs can contain many extra shades from lighting and texture. The planner may read these as separate colours.

Use a clearer original

Blurry or low-resolution images

Soft edges and lost detail can make colours harder to identify. Use a clearer, higher-resolution original for more accurate results.

From artwork to yarn plan

Start with these six steps, then make any small adjustments you need.

  1. Choose your design size

    Using an EFFY starter-kit frame? Our frames are 90 × 90 cm, and we recommend an 80 × 80 cm design. For your own frame, enter the space you want your design to fill, allowing room for carving and finishing.

  2. Upload your artwork

    Choose your own JPEG or PNG with clear edges and areas of colour. Remove empty background space around the design; keep white areas that belong to the rug.

    For several designs on one frame, arrange them together in an image-editing or design program and save them as one JPEG or PNG. Leave gaps for finishing, then upload the combined image. Fit design to frame scales the whole layout together.

  3. Choose your yarn colours

    Click an area in either preview to see its suggested EFFY cotton blend yarns. Try alternatives or browse by colour family and style. Use zoom to check small areas.

  4. Fit without stretching

    Fit design to frame makes the remaining design as large as it can be inside your chosen space while keeping its proportions. Add a border if you want one. Your original reference stays unchanged.

  5. Save your tracing image & plan

    Choose Download plan (PDF) in Keep your plan. The PDF includes the yarn list, yarn preview, colour projection and line projection. The two projection pages use the frame fit and mirror settings in Studio. Studio keeps an editable draft in this browser for this tab. Refresh to resume, or download your files to keep a separate copy.

  6. Review the cones & open your cart

    Check the estimated cone quantities and adjust them if needed. Choose your shop and create a cart. An eligible bulk code is added automatically when your selected yarns and quantities qualify; the shop confirms stock, discounts and the final total.

Choosing a size for your frame

Using our starter-kit frame? EFFY starter-kit frames are 90 × 90 cm. We recommend entering 80 × 80 cm for your design, leaving working space for carving and finishing.

Using your own frame? As a starting point, we recommend making the design about 10 cm narrower and 10 cm shorter than the frame: a 10 cm allowance overall in each direction. This leaves space for carving and folding waterfall edges. Adjust that allowance to suit your own frame and finishing method.

What happens to my artwork?

Your drawing is processed in your browser. It is not sent to EFFY or stored in the cloud. Studio saves a working copy in this browser so you can refresh this tab and keep editing.

Use Remove drawing to delete your draft. Download your images and yarn list to keep a separate copy on your device.

Want a beginner starting point? Explore LM Rug Designs

LM Rugs offers four design packs, bought separately from the artist’s shop. This is an optional way to start; you can use your own suitable artwork instead.

Upload the drawing from your purchased pack. A reviewed colourway loads when the drawing matches one in the Design Studio. Use the original drawing file; screenshots, cropping or other changes can prevent a match. Recognition happens in your browser, without sending the artwork to EFFY.

For a different frame, enter the width and height you want the design to fit within, then choose Fit design to frame. Your selected colourway stays the same and the yarn quantities are recalculated. You can choose other yarn colours at any time, or browse LM Rug Designs and their yarn colours for ideas.

A few useful adjustments

How colour suggestions work

These starting suggestions draw on Carolyn’s experience handling and tufting EFFY yarn. They aim to create a palette that works well together, using the bright, earthy or pastel characteristics of the yarns. The closest individual colour match may not be the best fit for the whole design.

Colours affect how we see the shades beside them. A yarn can appear slightly different once tufted next to another colour, and a very vivid shade beside a softer, earthy tone can look jarring.

For example, 17 Fuchsia and 68 Pink have a similarly vivid feel. Pairing Fuchsia with the softer 21 Rose can create a much stronger difference in colour intensity. We generally suggest yarns with a similar level of vibrancy in one palette, while offering alternatives to explore.

Colour previews, yarn suggestions and quantities are estimates to help you plan. You are responsible for your design, yarn selections and purchasing decisions. EFFY does not guarantee colour matches, yarn quantities or finished results and is not responsible for the outcome of your design. Compare the displayed cone and cut-pile photos before ordering. If you already have the yarn, compare the physical shades together too.

Your feedback helps us improve the Design Studio. There is a feedback form at the bottom of the Design Studio, and we will actively use your feedback and ideas to improve the colour-matching algorithm and how the studio works. Please tell us what works, what does not and what you would like to see. One person cannot anticipate every design or colour combination — your experience helps us build a better Design Studio together.

Removing background and adding a border

Remove outer background removes empty space connected to the outside of the image. If an enclosed gap remains, use Mark background, click that empty area, then finish removing the background. A light grey-and-white checkerboard shows removed space. It uses no yarn and is not included in saved images.

Under Add a rug border, choose an outline that follows your design or a square background. Then choose the border width and the yarn colour for your border. The added border is included in your yarn estimate.

Combining, separating and recolouring areas

If several detected shades are really one colour, choose Combine colours, select the areas to join and apply the change. If one detected colour contains areas you want to treat differently, use Separate area.

Colour selected patches lets you pick several separate pieces and give them one yarn shade together. Check the preview as you go; the colours found in an image are a starting point, not a final decision.

Preparing an image to trace onto your frame

Use Zoom images to inspect detail; this changes your view, not the rug size. In Frame & projection, mirror left to right when tracing onto the back of your cloth. Flip top to bottom if needed.

Turn on Show line projection for a plain view of the colour boundaries. Fill black areas is on by default. For designs with lots of black or sketchy black detail, try unticking it for a clearer tracing image. Save the projection image or line projection to use for tracing, and check the projected size on your frame.

Start with a clear image, check the suggestions, then make the design your own.

Open the Design Studio

The example flower illustrations were made for this guide. They are not LM Rugs pattern previews.