Stitchwork
Asset replacement for Hollow Knight: Silksong (sprites, textures, audio, video, text). Forked from Patchwork by Ashiepaws with extended T2D handling, hardware-cursor replacement, performance instrumen
About this mod Author’s original text
About Stitchwork
forked and maintained by FabulatorK
Quick Introduction
Stitchwork is a robust asset replacement mod and creator enhancement tool kit.\
(It helps with making and loading skins, similar to using resource packs in Minecraft.)\
It's a humble fork of Patchwork by Ashiepaws, to whom this project owes great gratitude.\
Most features in this project are built from prior feedback for Patchwork and collaborations with skin creators.
Want to play the game with a skin?\
Install Stitchwork and at least one skin pack, then open the Pack Manager GUI in game with hotkey 1 (alpha 1, not numpad) to manage which skin pack to activate (or disable).\
The skin packs you designate will load after a scene reload in-game without having to restart the game process.
If you'd like to make a skin for the game using Stitchwork, please refer to the wiki section on this mod page.
Install the Mod
- Mod managers:\
We recommend Cogfly, Gale, or r2modman, make a profile in the manager, and install Stitchwork from search.\
Consult the respective mod manager pages for detailed guides.
- Manual:\
Put Stitchwork.dll from the downloaded and extracted file into BepInEx/plugins/StitchworkRoot.\
That's the whole install — since 0.8.1 the shader bundle and localization
tables ride inside the DLL, albeit a restart might be required for first-time users.\
(Companion files beside the DLL still work and take precedence if present, they are still shipped in the mod package as stitchwork.assetbundle and the Lang/ folder.)
Patchwork by Ashiepaws
Patchwork pioneered live asset replacement for Hollow Knight: Silksong — sprites, audio, text, video, all swapped on the fly without touching a game file.\
It defined a new granularity standard of asset replacement mods at a per-sprite level, this helps skins survive game updates better and more controls for artists over their work.\
Stitchwork inherited its loading model, its pack idea, and its
replace-don't-modify approach, and ideas from Ashiepaws continue to shape
the roadmap to 1.0 and beyond.
Two behaviors follow from that lineage:
- Patchwork packs load unchanged.\
Stitchwork discovers Patchwork/ folders exactly as it discovers its own — a pack authored for the
original framework needs no re-authoring.
- If Patchwork itself is installed, Stitchwork goes inert for the
session rather than fight over the same game hooks.
As of version 0.8.4, old skin packs made for Customizer mods can be discovered by Stitchwork without moving from their existing install path (.../Hollow Knight Silksong/Hollow Knight Silksong_Data/Mods/Customizer), they are properly tagged with the "Customizer" badge.\
In addition, Customizer skin packs downloaded into the BepInEx/plugins folder by mod managers are recognized and they wear the "wayward" badge in the Pack Manager GUI.
As of version 0.8.6, Stitchwork/Patchwork skin packs can be dropped into the /Packs folder in their normal shape (/Packs//Stitchwork...) and are discovered globally. This helps users who juggle multiple profiles with a mod manager.
Where to report problems
Stitchwork is a separate project from Patchwork.\
Do not submit Stitchwork issues to Patchwork's GitHub page.\
Ashiepaws does not maintain this fork, and a report there does not reach us.\
Report Stitchwork problems through the Stitchwork channels:\
Find the #Stitchwork channel in the community modding Discord server, Hollow Knight Modding.\
(You may need to assign yourself necessary roles in #Channels&Roles.)\
Or open a support post in the #silk-support channel with Stitchwork in the title of your post.\
Please include your BepInEx/LogOutput.log file in your post and provide as much relevant information as you can.
What the fork adds
On that foundation, Stitchwork consolidates some of the core mechanics and builds out its own creator toolset: the Dev
Hub (find any asset by pointing at it in the game world), the animation
console and onion-skin canvas workflow, per-clip animation art (Appliqué) to
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: