Counted cross stitch is often described as ‘painting by numbers’ but with embroidery threads. You follow a ready-made pattern to make something fabulous while enjoying a wonderfully mindful activity.
What if you could create your own patterns to stitch and open up a whole new realm of creativity? Perhaps you have some favourite photos you’d love to turn into a cross stitch design to hang on your wall or to give as a gift. Or maybe your imagination is brimming with ideas for a design to stitch for yourself or a loved one, or even start your own cross stitch design business!
With the Stitchly app, producing your own cross stitch patterns, large or small, has become easier than ever. You don’t need to be a software whizz or a graphic designer to give it a try straight away.
Getting started
To get started, download the demo version here on an iPhone, iPad or Mac and you can try out the basic features with your own photos or design ideas.
Take things to the next level by upgrading to the full version of Stitchly for a one-off fee of £39.99 to unlock all the handy features for both personal and professional use.
Convert your photos into cross stitch
One of the first things to try is creating a cross stitch pattern from a photograph. Simply choose a suitable pic from your camera roll, upload it to the app and pick the size, count and thread you’d like (choose from DMC, Anchor, Weeks Dye Works, Kreinik and more).
The handy Wizard tool shows you how your design will look at different sizes or with different thread brands. It’s easy to limit the thread shades required too, to keep within your budget. Or if you like photo-realistic designs, add more colours to increase the level of shading detail.
You can preview how blending effects will look too, to easily make informed choices for how your finished design will look when stitched.
Draw your own cross stitch designs
It’s so easy to draw your own patterns too! Enter your grid size in stitches or cm, and select the thread brand and range. Then simply start designing from scratch, or trace an outline of a photo, or one of your own sketches or illustrations, by importing it behind the grid.
Tap the squares with your finger or Apple pencil (or mouse on the Mac version) to place the stitches on the grid in your chosen shades as you build up your pattern. It’s easy to zoom in and undo or redo sections, too, so don’t worry if you make a mistake.
As well as the thread options, you can include a variety of stitch types such as fractionals, half stitches, squashed fractionals, backstitch and French knots as well as Mill Hill seed beads. You can move stitches or whole sections of your design around, or copy and paste and mirror your drawings too, to save you time.
Another great feature is the text-to-stitch tool. Type in a word or name and choose the font and size and it will automatically turn it into a pattern you can place on your grid. This makes it easier than ever to create typography designs or add customised text to your patterns.
Tracking your progress when stitching
Once you’re happy with the pattern and are ready to start stitching, use the app to track your progress by marking off completed stitches. You can easily zoom in on section to highlight colours or mark off as complete.
Alternatively, print directly from Stitchly with a range of options and layout guides to pick from, or export your final pattern into a PDF or JPG file that you can print out from a computer. If you prefer larger patterns to stitch from more easily, then choose a higher number of sheets to display across, which splits the pattern into larger sections.
Your exported cross stitch pattern also includes a key, which you can customise to include symbols, shaded boxes or black and white display options.
There’s also a handy chart to show how all the sections of the pattern fit together across the page layout, so you can stick the printouts together as one big pattern if you like for easy reading.
If you’re using the app to track your stitching progress, you won’t need to refer to the key each time you change shade – simply tap the square to see the thread reference.
Don’t forget to preview your progress to see just how far you’ve come, and easily see at a glance which stitches are already completed.
Going professional with Stitchly
There is a huge market out there for new and original counted cross stitch patterns across a wide range of styles, themes and sizes. If you’ve ever thought about selling your own designs as PDF downloads, then the full version of Stitchly is a great place to start.
Whether you’re converting your personal photos to patterns or drawing your own designs, with ease you’re able to add your shop logo, copyright or designer details when exporting patterns. You can offer personalised or bespoke designs too, by adding names or dates to existing designs and exporting them again for your customer.
Create a stitched simulation picture of your design using the Preview tool. Choose from shaded pixels or ‘stitches’ with a grid or white background, to give your potential customers an idea of how the final design will look.
Download the Stitchly app today
This affordable entry-level cross stitch software means everyone can give cross stitch design a go in a simple and easy to use app.
Head to the website to get started on your creative cross stitch journey today.
