Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

Generate cross-stitch design

How to get cross-stitch design

To get your cross-stitching pattern is easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Select an image to upload.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

2. After that, you will be able to adjust an area of the image and size of the resulting design.

Then select the needlepoint, canvas, cell size and number of thread colors.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

3. If you are happy with the preview, you can generate your printable pattern PDF.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

Generate cross-stitch design

General settings

  • Select an image to convert — The generator processes images that you upload to create cross stitch patterns that look same as the uploaded image. Select a photo or drawing that you want to convert.
  • Brightness — If your image is dark, you might want to increase this value, if your image after increasing contrast is having light parts having too few details, you might want to decrease this value.
  • Saturation — If you need the result to have colors closer for basic colors, which is useful for drawings, you might want to increase this value, if you want to have more grayscale result, you can decrease this value.
  • Contrast — If the lightest part on your image is not white and/or darkest part of your image is not black, you might want to increase this value, otherwise the generator might find too few colors for your pattern.
  • Fabric cell size — The canvas is a fabric that you stitch your design on, the number of holes you can count on this canvas per each inch of its length, is named as count and is a number that you see in the value of this field.
  • Floss palette — There are many companies that manufacture colored threads, you can check your hobby store for available brands and select the one that you prefer in this field.
  • Size — In this field you define width of your resulting pattern in centimeters, and height is calculated automatically to keep the aspect ratio being the same as the area of the image, marked with green border on the preview of the uploaded image. If your image has a lot of tiny details, increasing size will help you having those details visible, and also will decrease number of colors required for the pattern.
  • Complexity (quality and details) — Allows you to adjust details and thus quality of matching of the pattern to the source image, gradually changing options in advanced settings automatically. The higher this value, the more details your pattern will have and the more complicated it will be to work on this pattern.
  • Fractional crosses — Enables smoothing lines on the pattern by allowing the cross parts having different color. You will have to use fractional stitches to make those crosses, which means to stitch some quarters of some crosses with thread of different color. You can use quarter, half, and three quarter stitches when colors of parts of crosses match.
  • Mix colors — Enables smoothing color gradients by mixing threads of different colors inserted into a single needle. In the color chart you will see them as color where several color codes are stated.
  • More details (complicated) — Enables using more of tiny details on your image when generating a pattern. This makes the pattern more complicated to work on, but producing more crisp result.
  • More colors (complicated) — Allows the generator to use more colors when generating a pattern. This allows having more photorealistic result. This option is often useful for colorful photos.
  • Color background for pattern cells — Enables drawing color background under symbols on the stitch map. This is useful to visually see what you are working on, but it is more expensive if you are going to print the pattern before working on it.
  • Large pattern cells — Increases size of symbols on the generated stitch map and adds mounting holes on the color chart. It is useful if you have poor eyesight and going to print the pattern, but it makes the pattern more pages and thus more expensive to print.
  • For printing on a printer (PDF) — Enables generating pattern as PDF, containing pattern split into pages, suitable for printing on a common office/home printer. Disabling this option results in generating 3 files, containing preview, color chart and stitch map as separate image files, which is useful if you are using tabled of mobile phone for working on your design.
  • Fabric color — Allows you to change a color of the canvas, which is useful for example if you are willing to have a white silhouette on a black canvas. This option is useful if you selected a transparent color on your image or used an image with transparent areas.
  • Use selected palette colors — If you created a pattern and do not like how the generator selected colors for your pattern, you can manually select which threads you want to be used for the pattern generation.
  • Do not stitch colors — Allows you to select which color or colors should be considered as transparent. It is useful for example if you have a black drawing on a white background and would like to stitch only black part. Please note that for best result it is recommended to use an image with transparency for this purpose.
  • Number of colors — Allows you to lower or increase number of colors that the generator should use for creating the pattern. It is recommended to configure all other parameters before changing this value because most of them cause this value being recalculated.

Cross types

Full cross stitch

In the color map in the order of columns you will find:

  • the color sample;
  • the sign that is used on the design;
  • the floss code and after "x" the number of threads that you should put into the needle;
  • the number of crosses of this color on the design;
  • the number of flosses (6 strands having 8 meter length), when a slash sign is used, the number of strands of a whole floss is shown.

For mixed colors, floss codes and the number of threads are displayed for both colors.

Full cross stitch on the design is a full-size sign and should be stitched in an ordinary way.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

3/4 stitch + 1/4 stitch

This type of stitch is displayed as a sign, separated into 4 parts, where 3 parts have the same color and 1 differs. It can be stitched as one whole diagonal stitch and one as a half-diagonal stitch of the same color, and the rest half diagonal stitch of another color.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

Other types of stitches

There also can be crosses having two diagonal stitches of different colors, upper and lower parts of the cross of different colors. If the color that should not be stitched is selected, there can be crosses that do not have some parts stitched.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

There also are other options.

Pattern center

The center of the design is marked with red color. It is simpler to start from the center of fabric and not to calculate which side to start from.

Guide to create cross-stitching designs on your own

Did you like the design and want to make your own on your photo? Try Cross-stitching design generator.

We create and share cross-stitching designs with you for free.
All designs are free for use by end users. At the same time no reselling or copying for other cross-stitching sites is allowed.
We pay attention that no behavior that violates copyright and other laws is present on this site.

Generate cross-stitch design

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