How to Make Your Own Cross Stitch Pattern

Making your cross stitch pattern may be easier than you have ever thought. If it’s your first time and you have seen how complicated some designs are, it may be very discouraging.

You may have never considered making your pattern because you fear it’s a tedious process. This article will solve your fears and give you simple and easy steps to stretch your creativity.

How to Make Your Own Cross Stitch Pattern?

Designing your cross stitch pattern doesn’t have to be tedious. If you are a knitter, you must have wished to create your stitch pattern professionally.

You may desire to design a cross stitch pattern for someone special, but you’re wondering how to go about it. You don’t have to hire a professional because you have all the professionalism you need.

Follow the simple steps below, and you will love how creative you can get.

The first step into arriving at that desired pattern is choosing the correct way for a start. Thus, do not go for the complicated patterns if you are a first-timer.

Nevertheless, you can choose a simple design to begin. That’s because this will encourage you when you finally do an excellent job.

Moreover, another vital aspect to observe is the colors you will need for your design. Make sure you make the right choice of colons.

Well-blended colors bring out the best designs. But, choosing colors will often depend on your preferences.

1. Use a Grid Paper to Make Your Cross Stitch Pattern

Grid papers are the best when designing patterns for a cross-stitch. That’s because they have vertical and horizontal lines that form squares.

Besides, you will also need a pencil for tracing. You can count the squares as cross stitches when you are designing.

Grid papers are available in the local market and online. You can also get a piece of graph paper from a kid’s graph book.

Step 1: Get a pencil and grid paper. The pencil will help you trace your design onto the grid paper.

Step 2: You will need to lay the image over a backlight. You can use either a lightbox or hold it against the window.

The light will help reflect the image on the other side of the graph paper.

Step 3: Lay your grid or graph paper on the image or design. Ensure to place the grid paper in an excellent position to cover the structure.

Step 4: Check if your design is set for tracing before you proceed. Once you are comfortable, you can now trace your creation’s shape using a pencil.

Moreover, ensure you trace all the lines of your image on the grid paper.

Step 5: Once you finish tracing your outline, start to fill in the stitches. So, you can draw X- shape inside the squares to show where the stitches will go.

Step 6: Mark the outline with a backstitch or a double running stitch. You will need to pick some of the best colors you need for your design.

Fill a complete cross stitch on whole squares. When only a part of the square shows on your design, that will need a half-cross stitch.

Here is where you need to encourage your color mix skills to bring out the best design.

2. Make Your Cross Stitch Pattern Using a Software

Using software to create your cross stitch pattern is another easy option you should try. Sometimes you may opt for the software and not hand designing for many reasons.

That’s because the software gives you many advantages of good programs to work with your cross stitch patterns.

But, you need to be cautious with the type of program you choose to use. Some plans limit their designs to simple designs and limited color matching options.

Moreover, some online software needs you to pay and download their setup file to your PC or Mac. Free software will limit you to simple designs and a little mix of colors.

But you can also try the free software to test your pattern designing skills. It will be worth it.

Use your own images when using software programs to make your cross stitch pattern. Online images have copyrights cover, and you may need permissions before using them.

Always start with simple designs to help you get comfortable and gain expertise. What’s more, you can move to advanced images when you get comfortable with maneuvering around the software.

Make sure you try all the possible designs and colors possible. Do not limit yourself; that way, you will advance your skills.

There are many cross stitch pattern designing software programs you can use. MacStitch and Winstitch are some of the software programs you can use on your Mac or PC.

But for you to use either of the two, you have to invest some cash. However, the investment will be very much worth it in the long run.

The software options offer you many professional features to make your desired patterns. Thus they are a good choice for your cross stitch pattern designs.

3. Use Winstitch or Macstitch to Design Your Cross Stitch Pattern

Winstitch and Macstitch give you an option of going through the quick start guide. The quick start guide will give you all the information you will need if you have not used the program before.

You will need to input your creativity when using the software. So, your creativity will determine how good your cross stitch pattern looks.

Below is a helpful guide to help you make a quick and simple design for beginners.

Step 1: Well, the first step is to ensure you have your Mac or Windows programs installed. Besides, the programs should be up and running.

Step 2: Open the program and click on new, then click on your design size. It will get you to the next window, where you will need to specify what you need.

Step 3: Choose the number of stitches you want to use per inch depending on the material you are using. Generally, the number of stitches will range from as low as five stitches up to 50 stitches per inch.

Step 4: If you want to design your pattern in the square, click on keep ratio to help keep the design proportionate. Any other shape, unclick it and change the length and width to your desired design size.

Step 5: Choose the color of your fabric and add any desirable title of your design.

There is an option to change the colors later. Click ok.

Step 6: Start adding colors. There are several DMC colors available.

Thus, you can add all the colors you will love to have for your design.

Step 7: Once you have your palette saved, you can now go ahead and start creating your pattern.

Step 8: Look for many simple images you might have saved. If you don’t have any, they use a simple image such as the heart or rose flower shape.

Step 9: You will need to click on each square as you go about creating your design. Here you can use single stitches, circle stitches, or even many of them.

Using a simple design to get started will make your work easier and have a smooth and quick ending.

Step 10: After you finish making the best of your creativity out of your cross stitch pattern, export to PDF. Exporting your finished design to PDF will give you an option of sharing or even selling it.

As you can see, you will have the option to choose different colors to do your design and make it stunning. The software gives you many options to play around with colors and stitches.

Thus, put your creative skills into practice.

Winstitch gives you the option of adding backstitches. Another great feature is deleting a part of the stitches and erasing backstitches later.

There are also options of changing the fabric color later. You can as well change the color of stitches when you finish sketching your design.

What Is the Advantage of Using Software to Create a Cross Stitch Pattern?

There are many advantages of designing cross stitch patterns using the software. It gives you some great professional features.

They have the most sophisticated ways to make your patterns. Thus, they are worth an investment.

Yes, it may seem expensive, but you will love the whole process once you learn how to use it. With software programs, you can design any pattern from simple to most complicated.

Why Is a Handmade Cross Stitch Pattern Best for Beginners?

Hand designing your cross stitch pattern is simple and cheap. It’s something anyone can design without strain.

It’s also a good choice for people who don’t feel confident using the software.

If someone wants to learn simple cross stitch design, they should start with the grid paper tracing method. It will be easier to advance later into the software programs once you have an idea of simple designing.