Knot pattern generator

Cords that pass over and under. Choose a Chinese knot net, macramé or Urnes interlace, how many loops fit across the tile and how thick the cord, and export a seamless pattern as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

A net of red cords woven over and under with dark red edges and gold highlights on a cream ground

Cord as ornament

Chinese decorative knotting turns a single cord into flat, symmetrical shapes, many of them with names that stand for good fortune, and the endless knot is among the eight Buddhist emblems. Macramé is knotted cord: the name probably comes from an Arabic word for fringe, and sailors made it into belts, nets and hammocks. The Urnes style is the last phase of Viking Age art, named after a stave church in Norway, with long, slender animals and tendrils that loop and cross in thin interlaced lines.

Ornamatic draws general versions. The Urnes interlace here has the sinuous lines but not the animal heads.

How the generator builds them

Each pattern is a set of cords on a repeating grid. A solver finds every crossing, chains the cords into closed threads and gives each crossing an over or under so that every cord alternates along its length, and the over pieces are drawn on top with a gap around them. The Chinese net is rows and columns of waves in antiphase, the macramé is two families of diagonal cords with a square knot at some crossings, and the Urnes interlace is skewed S-curves.

Because the weave is solved on the repeating grid, the over and under pattern joins up across the edge of the tile. The number of loops is always even, which is what lets each cord alternate all the way around.