The Situation
The Patternata mobile app proved that an everyday person could design an original scarf on a phone. But phones are where ideas start, not always where they finish. Users wanted room to breathe — a bigger surface to refine dense compositions, line up motifs precisely, and review a design at scale before sending it to print. They also wanted to move between their phone and a laptop without losing work.
A web application answered both needs, but it raised its own questions. The product had to deliver the same fluid, motif-driven canvas inside a browser, with no install and no plugin, while keeping every project perfectly in sync with the mobile experience. The challenge was to preserve the feel of the native canvas on the web and to make cross-device continuity invisible — a design opened on the laptop should simply be the same design, exactly where the user left it.
We were engaged to build the web application as a first-class companion to the mobile app, not a watered-down viewer.
What We Did
We built the web app on Next.js with an interactive canvas powered by Fabric.js, and used Supabase for authentication, project storage, and real-time sync.
The work concentrated on four areas:
- Browser canvas engine. We rebuilt the editing surface for the web with Fabric.js, matching the mobile app's interaction model — free placement, scaling, rotation, and symmetry — so the experience feels continuous across platforms rather than like two separate tools.
- Shared design system. We codified the motif catalog, spacing, and component styling into a single design system so the web and mobile clients stay visually and behaviorally consistent as the product evolves.
- Cloud-synced projects. Designs and assets live in Supabase, so a project is available on any device the moment a user signs in. Edits made on the laptop appear on the phone and vice versa, with no manual export-import step.
- Print-grade export. The larger screen made it natural to add precise review and high-resolution export, producing clean 4K output suitable for textile production handoff.
Because this is an in-house product, we ship continuously, validating each release with the same early users who shape the mobile roadmap.
The Results
The web application removed every barrier to entry: it runs entirely in the browser with no install, loads the editing canvas in under 1.5 seconds on broadband, and keeps 100% of projects synced across devices through the shared Supabase backend. Users now sketch on their phone during the day and tighten the composition on a laptop later — same project, same motifs, no friction.
The shared design system has paid off as the team adds features, since changes propagate across both clients without drift. Development is ongoing, with the web app and mobile app advancing together on a single canvas foundation.
