How to turn a photo into a cross stitch pattern
- Choose a picture. Pick a photo or drawing, drop it on the box or paste it. It stays on your device. No picture at hand? Try the sample Christmas tree.
- Crop it. Drag the box or its corners around the part you want to stitch. A tight crop gives the subject more stitches.
- Set the size. Type the width in stitches and pick the fabric: 11, 14, 16 or 18-count Aida. The height follows the crop, and the finished size shows in inches and centimeters.
- Choose the colors. Move the Colors slider. Turn on dithering for photos, tidy up single stitches for drawings, leave a plain background unstitched, or add backstitch outlines.
- Check the preview. Stitched shows the pattern as crosses on fabric; Chart shows the symbols you will follow. Zoom in to check faces and small details.
- Download. The PDF pattern has a cover, the thread key and the chart pages; the PNG is the view on screen.
Reading the pattern
Every square on the chart is one full cross stitch, and each thread color has its own symbol. The key lists the symbol, the DMC number, the color name, how many stitches use it and how many skeins to buy. Bold lines mark every 10 stitches, and the numbers along the top and left count stitches from the top left corner, so you can find your place on any page. The small arrows at the edges point to the middle row and column: most stitchers start there, so the design ends up centered on the fabric.
A big pattern is split over several pages. The page map on the cover shows how they fit together. With page overlap on, each page repeats the last 2 or 5 rows or columns of the page before it, shaded grey, so you can line them up; stitch those squares only once. Set Chart to Black and white to save ink, or In color to see the thread colors behind the symbols while you stitch.
Fabric count and finished size
Aida's count is the number of stitches per inch. The finished size is the stitches divided by the count: 112 stitches are 8 inches on 14-count, 7 on 16-count and about 6.2 on 18-count. A lower count is easier on the eyes and makes a bigger piece; a higher count gives finer detail in a smaller space. Cut the fabric a few inches larger on every side than the design so it fits in a hoop and a frame.
The skein estimate depends on the strands you stitch with, so set Strands to what you will use. Each skein of DMC six-strand floss is an 8 m length of six strands that separate. The tool assumes a skein covers about 1,600 full crosses on 14-count with 2 strands, more on finer fabric or with fewer strands, and fewer on coarser fabric or with more. It adds 10% and rounds up. That is a cautious rule of thumb: the thread one cross needs on paper would cover about 2,700, but starting and ending threads, moving between areas and stitch tension use up a lot of it. Published rules of thumb vary widely, so treat the numbers as an estimate and buy an extra skein of the colors you use most.
Tips for a pattern that stitches well
- Simple pictures work best. A clear subject with strong shapes, like a pet, a house or a logo, reads better than a busy scene.
- Size decides detail. Faces need more stitches than you might expect, so try a wider pattern and zoom into the preview. Small ornaments and cards work best from simple drawings with few colors.
- Watch for confetti. Lots of lone stitches of another color are slow to stitch. Use fewer colors, turn dithering off, or keep "Tidy up single stitches" on.
- Check the thread. Screens and printers only approximate thread colors. Compare the DMC numbers with a real color card before you buy, and swap a color in the shop if it looks wrong.
Coloring pages from photos
Switch to Coloring page to turn the same picture into black outlines on white. The tool splits the picture into a few flat color areas and draws their borders: Simple gives big shapes for young children, Detailed keeps more of the picture. For Christmas crafts, the Christmas stencil maker prints stencils and ornament templates, and the paper snowflake maker prints snowflakes to fold and cut. Need a design on squared paper instead? Print graph paper. iPhone photos in HEIC format may not open here: convert them first with the HEIC to JPG converter.
Thread colors and credits
Thread colors are matched against the 489 colors of DMC six-strand embroidery floss (Mouliné Spécial, article 117), using color values from craft-color-codes by MakeBead, licensed CC BY 4.0 (as of October 2026). The skein length is from DMC's own product pages. DMC is a trademark of DMC; we use the numbers only to name colors and aren't connected with DMC.