How To Design Your Own Cross Stitch Patterns For Free (Even If You're A Complete Beginner!)

So, you've fallen in love with cross stitch but now you're ready to take things to the next level and start designing your own patterns. Maybe you’ve got a fun idea in your head, or you just want something completely unique to stitch. The good news? You don’t need to be a pro (or spend a ton of money) to start creating your own custom cross stitch designs.

As someone who makes their living off designing and creating beginner-friendly cross stitch kits, this blog post might seem a little counter-intuitive. However, I'm all for helping people become more creative which means that it's just not in my nature to gatekeep the knowledge I have gained over the last few years! So please, go forth and design... but if you ever do fancy treating yourself to a modern, beginner-friendly cross stitch kit that includes everything you need to create a bright and beautiful piece of art celebrating the UK, please remember me!

In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly how to design your own cross stitch patterns from scratch using free tools that are perfect for beginners. There is even a free downloadable resource to help you get started with empty charts and basic alphabets (cross stitch and back stitch). Whether you're dreaming of a cute quote, a pixel-style portrait, or your favourite video game icon, you’ll learn how to turn your ideas into actual stitchable patterns.

Ready to get creative? Let’s dive in!

1. create a basic sketch

The first sketch of our Kielder Water cross stitch kit

This first sketch allows you to map out your idea by deciding on your basic elements and their positioning. You don't need to be very specific with this, it just helps you figure out what you want to include and where.

When creating a cross stitch design it's important to remember that it's effectively pixel art, so it's best to keep it simple. Here are a few things to consider when designing as a beginner...

• Use... basic shapes, straight lines and block colours.

• Avoid... shading, subtle curves, small details.

2. decide on your fabric

Before you can turn your idea into a cross stitch design, you need to know what you're working with in terms of the shape and size of your pattern area, and therefore the number of 'pixels' (ie stitches) you can use. You may have some fabric in your stash you're hoping to use, or a particular frame you're keen to use, so it's far easier to design with that space in mind from the outset, rather than creating a design only to realise it doesn't fit the space you need it to.

3. draw your design onto graph paper

This actually has two steps...

• Draw your design boundaries: As mentioned above you will need to fit your design within a particular space dependent on your fabric and/or frame choice, so draw those boundaries onto your graph paper. You can do the maths dependent on your fabric stitch count, or download the free resource at the end of this blog which includes chart paper with boundaries of standard frame sizes marked on.

• Draw your design: Using your basic sketch as a reference, draw your design onto the graph paper within the boundaries you have set. Keep important details away from the boundaries as they may get covered with a frame.

4. decide on thread colours

When choosing colours for your pattern a good place to start is your stash. This is the perfect opportunity to use up those left overs from cross stitch kits. If you want to be a bit more particular about your choice of colours and think you want to use colours you don't already have, I'd suggest using a thread shade book, such as this DMC book that includes little samples of all the colours. Two things to remember about thread colours when designing...

• Thread colours look different on a screen: No matter which design software you use, thread colours will always look slightly different than in real life (that also goes for photos of threads on a screen). So don't worry too much when you put your design onto the computer program and it doesn't look quite right.

• Colours are impacted by their surroundings: On it's own a particular thread shade might look vibrant and bold, but near other colours it might get 'washed out' or clash. Make sure you consider all the potential thread colours together and also next to the fabric you're using.

• You can always change your mind: When stitching up your pattern you will soon see whether a particular colour works or not. The benefit of being the designer of the pattern means you can change your mind about a particular colour and swap it out for another colour at any time.

5. plot your pattern on a computer program

If your pattern is super simple, you could avoid this step by simply colouring in your pattern on your graph paper square by square (ie stitch by stitch), however if your pattern is a little more complicated I'd recommend plotting it onto a computer program. This way you can change the pattern easily.

There are lots of cross stitch design programs to choose from, but in my opinion Stitchfiddle is the best free cross stitch design software (to be clear I'm in no way paid by them, I actually use the paid version to design all the TSK cross stitch patterns).

It's browser-based so you can access it on any device as long as you have internet (I mostly use my computer but can also use my Ipad with apple pencil and my phone if I want to make quick changes), and with the free version you can save up to 15 designs on their system, create designs of up to 300x300 stitches using up to 50 colours per design, create a design by uploading a picture and also download your patterns as PDFs. Best of all it's super simple so even technophobes like me find it a doddle!

6. stitch it

Warkworth Castle Cross Stitch WIP with Northumberland Flag needleminder

It might not seem it, but stitching your pattern is a crucial part of the design process. You will most likely find as you're stitching that the pattern needs to change, maybe because certain colours don't look right, the spacing between letters doesn't look right, or some of the smaller details are getting lost. More and more these days we are seeing cross stitch designers ignoring this last step and using computer programs to create 'mock ups' of the design which they are then using as their listing photos. I completely understand why they might choose to do this, it would save a LOT of time, but personally I find that stitching the pattern myself allows me to identify things that need to be changed.

I hope this little whistlestop tour through basic cross stitch design has been helpful, and if you feel inspired but haven't got the time to create your design now, save this blog to your bookmarks so you can come back to it later!

Gateshead Collection Cross Stitch Kit

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