how to make your own cross stitch graph pper

Lay the tracing back over the original picture and shade in the different areas of colour. Next, use ordinary coloured crayons to add colour to the traced outline. Trace the outer edges of the petals and leaves to create a simple outline. The size of the finished embroidery will also be altered by the size of the squared paper that you use and by the count of the fabric that you work on, but you need a drawing large enough to get plenty of squares in each petal in order to add enough colours and therefore detail. If so, take it to a photocopier for enlarging or reducing. At this stage you may want to alter the size of your drawing. Lay tracing paper over the picture and trace the outer edges of the petals and leaves. Choose a simple flower with large petals and no fiddly bits. I drew mine freehand, but you could very easily trace any flower from a picture in a gardening book or even from a photograph of your own garden. To start, you need a very simple outline drawing. If you have access to a computer design program, see below. As an example, I am going to show you how I made the chart a pansy design.

With the cunning use of tracing paper, you will be surprised how easy it is. ‘Oh that’s no good for me, I can’t draw’, I can hear you all cry! In fact, you don’t need to be able to draw to make your own charts. The company also provide a version for Windows, and even one for the iPad, so I can design wherever I am.Making Your Own Charts By Jane Greenoff & Sue Hawkins This worked well and did just what I needed. Eventually I found MacStitch by Ursa Software. Cross stitch software for the MacĬross stitch software for the Mac was harder to find. I happily used Easy Cross for many years until moving from PCs to a Mac.

Sadly the software I had chosen was slow to be updated, and eventually I started looking around for a replacement. I eventually settled on the most expensive program I could find, after all if it cost a lot it must be good eh? The next step was a bigger and better computer (why is the one we have never good enough?) and I looked around for a Windows program.īy this time we also had the internet and I downloaded and tried all the cross stitch software I could find. I soon learned that the benefits of designing cross stitch (and later blackwork) on the computer were many. No more scruffy hand-drawn charts with parts of the paper almost worn away where I had erased mistakes. It enabled me to print the charts that I sent to the magazine so they were neat and easy to read. Soon after that I discovered my first DOS cross stitch software. So what happened three weeks later? He would have had to chop off my hand to make me let go of the computer!

How to make your own cross stitch graph pper