How to Turn a Photo or Drawing into a Cross-Stitch Pattern

One of the most common questions I see online when it comes to designing patterns is how to turn a photo or drawing into a cross stitch pattern. It’s not actually that difficult, especially if the project isn’t too detailed, but there are also some ways to make it easier.

If you want to draw it out yourself by hand, these instructions from WikiHow cover the basics. You’ll need a light box (or a window) to help you trace the general outlines of your design and sketch in any details. You’ll also need gridded paper of the same count that you plan to use for your design (this helps get the scale right), which you can find here.

Once you have the general outline you’ll have to decide if you want to use partial stitches to follow the exact outlines of shapes or shift the design a little to keep with whole stitches. You can also pick your colors and choose to color in the chart or use different symbols to indicate the different colors (or both!).

If you don’t want to have to draw your cross stitch pattern out completely on your own, you can use a program like StitchFiddle to do it for you. With StitchFiddle you can choose your craft (knitting, crochet, cross stitch and more) and the brand of floss you use, then upload a photo or start with a blank chart to make your own design. You can even make QR codes to stitch.

You can alter the number of colors, the fabric count and the size and it will adjust your chart accordingly. (I don’t think you can save without an account, but it’s fun to play with to see what your chart will look like before you subscribe.)

Another option is to have someone else make the chart for you. This is a service that DMC offers on its website. You just upload your photo and indicate what size fabric you want to use. Then you’ll either pay for the chart itself, or they will send you the chart for free if you buy all the thread for the project at the same time.

Have you ever made a cross stitch chart from a photo or drawing? I’d love to hear your tips!

[Photo: DMC]

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Printable Cross Stitch Graph Paper

To celebrate back to school season, I wanted to make a fun and useful cross stitch pattern, so I decided on this cross stitch pencil bookmark.

It’s a really easy pattern even though it calls for six colors. You definitely don’t have to use all the colors if you don’t want to, and you can use different colors to make a colored pencil instead of the traditional yellow one.

These sorts of projects always end up taking longer than I imagined they would in my head, because I just don’t stop to do the math of exactly how many stitches are in a piece that’s 23 stitches by 74 rows (1,702, though not every single one of them is covered, most of them are).

But because the coloring of the chart is so straightforward, I’d say it also doesn’t take as long as 1,700 stitches sounds, if that makes sense. Because you barely have to count anything and could make most of it without consulting the chart, you can get into a groove pretty easily and stitch whole sections in a single sitting. I had a lot of fun stitching this one and I think you will, too.

Once the stitching is done, take a piece of felt and sew it to the back to hide the mess you’ve made and make it a nice smooth bookmark that’s easy to use in whatever book you might be reading.

This is a fun one to make for yourself or a kid in your life who is going back to school. But it would also be a fun teacher appreciation gift or holiday gift, especially for an English teacher but really anyone would like this one I think.

You can grab the free chart and get all the instructions for assembling your own cross stitch pencil bookmark over at Our Daily Craft.

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