Fiber Bench is the Android pattern app for nine weaving, knotting and stitching crafts, and version 0.5.12 is in closed testing on Google Play ahead of release. Here's the update the way we'd want to read it.
The headline feature: tablet weaving comes with a four-hole threading draft — S or Z for every card — and a turning sequence of forward, back or held for each card and each pick. Double-face threads every card two dark and two light and works the turns out from your picture. Inkle bands come with the threading order through the heddles. That is the difference between a drawing app and a weaving app, and it's the app's spine.
Tablet weaving · inkle bands and Baltic pickup · Cavandoli macramé · friendship bracelets · bargello (quilts and needlepoint) · latch-hook rugs · rug tufting · counted cross-stitch · filet crochet. All nine crafts free, with 165 worked examples on every device, no account anywhere.
Take-up and loom waste are the numbers that decide whether you run out three inches from the end, and they're in the supplies list, checked against the loom size you told the app you have. Several projects are totalled into one shopping list — same yarn, floss or cord added up, with the projects each color belongs to, ticked off as you buy.
A searchable list of 454 DMC colors, the nearest DMC for any other color, and photo-to-pattern matched to DMC directly. Supplies, Make mode, prints and shares all show the number to stitch with. Aida in 11, 14, 16 and 18 count, skeins per color, and the fabric cut size worked out.
Every color carries a shape or a letter so charts stay readable without color reliance. A magnifier rests under your finger while you draw. Hands-free mode reads one step at a time in large type with the screen kept on (Pro, free for the first three uses). Voice commands — "next", "back", "step 12" — are off until switched on, recognized on the phone, with nothing recorded or sent. TalkBack names every control and describes charts with their colors.
The app is free; sharing is free. Pro is a one-time purchase ($7.99) unlocking printing, hands-free, photo-to-pattern, the text tool, mirror drawing, no-attribution sharing and the 110-pattern Designer collection. Most Pro tools work free a few times first. No subscriptions, no ads, no tracking.
Closed testing runs while the public release is prepared — the waitlist hears first, and the app page keeps the full sourced write-up.