Before you can enter a warp or weft colour sequence for your design you need to add a Weave layer and a Colour Palette. The Colour Palette stores the colours that you choose and the Weave layer allows you to apply them to the design. 

Go to Weave Menu > New Weave Layer, followed by Window > Weave > Colour Palette. Alternatively add the relevant buttons to the toolbar and then click on them.

A new 8 bit image named Weave will be added to your layer list and a small grid-like window will appear containing white, black, red and grey squares.

Change these default colours as you wish, using one of the following methods:

• By dragging colours from the layers - place your cursor over the layer colour you want and drag it into one of the boxes on the top row of the colour palette.
• By dragging colours from a saved colour file - open the relevant colour file in ColourSys, place your cursor over the colour you want and drag it into one of the boxes on the top row of the colour palette.
• By choosing colours from the selected colour picker - place your cursor over one of the boxes on the top row of the colour palette, hold down ⌥ (option key) on the keyboard and click down. Choose a colour from the colour picker and click OK. The colour will appear in the colour palette.
• By dragging colours from the Swatches Palette.

Choose as many colours as you plan to use in your warp and weft colour sequences.

When you have several colours which are similar, it can be a little hard to know which colour you have used on which yarn. However, if you select the pipette from the tools palette, and Alt click on the warp of weft, the colour used for that yarn will momentarily highlight in the colour palette.

Colouring using the warp and weft colour bars in the Design Window

Go to Weave Menu > Show Warp & Weft or click on the Show Warp & Weft button in the toolbar. A horizontal bar will appear at the bottom of the Design Window (warp colour bar) and a vertical bar will appear on the right of the window (weft colour bar).

Click on a colour in the colour palette and draw on either the warp or weft colour bar. The design will update to show you a stripe of your chosen colour in the position that you drew on either the warp or weft.

Repeat with other colours to add more warp or weft stripes to the design.  Zoom in closer to see how you can colour individual ends and picks.

Colouring using the warp or weft colour windows

Go to Window Menu > Weave > Warp Colour or Weft Colour or click on the Tool bar buttons. A plan window will open showing a point paper plan of your warp or weft colour sequence. The window will contain the same number of squares across as the number of ends (warp colour window) or picks (weft colour window) in the design. The plan will be 16 squares in height as this is the default number of colours that can be used for the warp and weft. If you wish to change this number, for example if you only plan to use 6 colours, you can do so by going to AVA Menu > Settings and click on the Weave button.

The bottom row of the point paper represents the first colour in the colour palette and is known as colour a. The next row up is the second colour in the colour palette and is known as colour b, and so on. A small identification key can be seen on the left side of the plan, displaying the reference letters.

So, if you want to alternate your colour sequence between the first four colours in your colour palette, having four threads of each colour: you draw the first four squares on the bottom row of the point paper and then the next four squares on the second row up, four on row three and four on row four, repeating across the whole window. 

For a large design, repeating the above sequence across the whole design by hand would be very time consuming, so instead, you can repeat a chosen sequence automatically.

1. To do this, draw in the first sequence by hand (e.g. four on the first row, four on the second row, four on the third and four on the forth).
2. Move your cursor slightly below the point paper, in the white area of the window, underneath the first square. The cursor will change to a cross icon.
3. Click down and drag along to the right, underneath the sequence you have drawn by hand (in this case 16 squares). A bold red line will highlight where you are dragging and when you let go, at the end of the sequence, the chosen squares will become selected.
4. Click on the Repeat button at the top left of the window and your sequence will automatically be repeated across the whole warp or weft plan. 

Colouring by entering a formula

As explained above, each box in the colour palette represents a letter, so the first box at the left on the top row of the colour palette is colour a, the box next to this is colour b, the third is colour c and so on. Therefore to make 20 repeats of the first three colours one after the other, you would enter the formula as: 20(abc). The formula can be entered by holding down the Control key and clicking in either the Warp or Weft Colour bars and selecting Edit Formula from the contextual menu, or from the Warp or Weft Colour windows and clicking on the Open Drawer button at the top right of the window.

Click in the formula drawer on the right side of the warp or weft colour window and enter the formula you wish to use as a colour sequence.