I have been doing a little more cross stitch design this year, and while I generally start by drawing out my patterns by hand on graph paper, eventually I want them to be prettier and easier to read than a hand drawn chart would be.
Because I’m also a knitwear designer, I actually bought a program that makes knitting charts, which I can use for really basic charts. And by really basic I mean single color, whole stitches only. I could show blocks of different colors but they wouldn’t be different symbols if someone wanted to print the chart in black and white. I also can’t add things like back stitching or French knots.
So I’ve been thinking about whether I need to get some design software that was specifically made for cross stitch. Luckily lots of professional designers have used cross stitch programs before me and are willing to share what they have learned.
Gathered asked five professional cross stitch designers to try and review five different cross stitch design programs, including one specifically for Macs, two for PCs, one that’s an app, and one, StitchFiddle (probably the most popular one out there) that’s a cloud-based program you access via a website.
It’s not quite the same as getting reviews of all the programs from the same person, but these reviews are good overviews of the features of the programs. They touch on the different thread and symbol options, key features, how importing photos into the program works and their verdict on how the program works and who it is best for. The prices are listed in pounds since Gathered is a UK publication.
You can check out all the reviews on their website. It was interesting for me to read all of these. Since I use both a Mac and a PC, I could use any of these, but I have to figure out where I’d want to design more often to determine which one is best to buy (or I could use StitchFiddle anywhere).
If you have experience with any of these cross stitch design patterns I’d love to hear about it!
[Photo from Cross Stitch Professional Platinum, via Gathered]
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