How I design my own cross stitch patterns from scratch - and you can too! 

Thank you so much! I'm still feeling my way with this RU-vid lark so am glad to hear I amuse someone who isn't myself 🥳

I'm working on one! 😆

I’d love to watch a tutorial on this? Is it posted somewhere and I just missed it? 😄

Yes! Any news on the tutorial?

Looking forward to that tutorial!

@@TheGiddyStitcher def excited for this tutorial!!!

I agree, it's always kind of inspiring to me to see all the different creative approaches to design. Glad you enjoyed my little contribution, thank you for the comment 🥰

Thank you so much!

Thank you so much! ❤️

Step 2 is crucial, imo. Gotta give your brain some downtime to sort through things, it's SCIENCE! Welcome to the hobby! 😄

I think we probably are a bit crazy really, but definitely in the good way 😎

Aw thank you ☺️ That's such a good tactic, and of course every year new things will go into the public domain so there'll never be a shortage of inspiration!

I'm definitely with you there! It's so satisfying seeing something go from vague, unformed idea to an actual physical stitched thing!

Aw thank you! 🥰

Aw thank you so much! ❤️

Ah thank you so much! 🥰

I'm way too awkward to know how to really respond to compliments like this, so I'm just gonna say thanks 😅

@@TheGiddyStitcher haha same! You're welcome 💜

Ah thank you! 🥰

Thank you :)

There's not many things I'm skilled at but I guess if being awkward is a skill, I've got that one down. Thanks for watching!

That's super sweet of you to say, thank you! ❤️

Thank you! I don't despise it exactly but I do usually forget to plan enough time for it and then resent it greatly 😅

No thank YOU! 😄

Oh you do not even want to know how many shades of grey I bought to finally get this one how I wanted it 🤦‍♀️😂

@@TheGiddyStitcher I just can’t find the colors I want! And when there’s a color I love it runs out so fast and then I can’t find it again ☹️ .. grey is the worst to get right!

Thanks! Welcome to the channel, it's always nice to meet another local :)

Thank you! I have no idea how you found my video in that case, but I hope you enjoyed it nontheless 😆

Ooh, welcome to cross stitch! My PS action is custom made and tweaked over years and tbh is probably not very usable for anyone except me because it does some pretty specific things. Maybe I should think about making it more general and putting it up for download somewhere... But in the meantime there are a few for sale, I can't vouch for them obviously but it might be worth having a look at things like creativemarket.com/GraphicSpirit/1592002-Cross-Stitch-Photoshop-Action or graphicriver.net/item/cross-stitch-and-needlepoint-action/3264823 Hope that helps! :)

Good timing! I'm actually in the middle of redoing my system a bit to take into account Pattern Keeper compatibility, and have been running a few experiments on the most efficient way to do things, so will happily put all my findings into a video once I've got them straight in my head :D

Yes! It's a proper life hack 😁

Yes! I use this all the time both in cross stitch design and also Minecraft 🤓 Excellent tip.

Hi, thanks for watching! So it's all pretty specific to my process but basically: I work as pixel art first so each square is literally 1px and just use the built-in Photoshop grid for that. Then when it's done and time to turn into a mockup, the first step in that is to scale up the whole piece so that each previously 1px square is now a specific size that my custom-made mockup action expects it to be. Then I run the action, and hooray! Since everything needs to be a really specific size, for the 10x10 grids I literally just have a manually created grid image where each grid square is that exact size and drop it unceremoniously on top of the design. Ok I'm reading this back and it might not make any sense. Please let me know if it doesn't make any sense! :D

@@TheGiddyStitcher Thank you for the clear answer!! It made a lot of sense :)) I had another question, in the video at 4:02 you change the pixels of the design into crosses, how did you do that? Was it on photoshop as well? Because I went through all the settings and options and couldn't find anything similar :( Sorry for bothering you so much haha!!

Sorry I didn't make that clear. That's the mockup action, it uses my custom X brush to run quickly through a preset series of steps to turn it from plain squares to something looking vaguely like cross stitch. I believe you can buy similar actions, or the popular xstitch design softwares do something similar as a built-in feature. Good luck! :)

@@TheGiddyStitcher oooh!! That makes a lot more sense now :) Thank you for the quick reply!!

Ooh no that's awful! Which converter was it? I did do a whole video comparing free converters (dunno if you've seen that one yet) and some of them looked more accurate on screen than others but of course you never can be sure without stitching them, which is a big commitment. Converting between colour codes and threads is actually pretty complicated (which explains why all the converters end up with something slightly different) but I shall add this to the video requests pile, for sure!

@@TheGiddyStitcher so I didn't use a converter ... I manually made the pattern in Excel... This was before I knew about converters... I also really want to make my own patterns without relying on software that hides the code/ methods used, but it took a LONG time and that was for a 32 x 32 pattern. So a very long journey ahead to get better at this The issue is - the art I was making a pattern from was on physical paper so that's why I struggled to accurately convert the physical colours into digital colours. Any tips for this?

@@TheGiddyStitcher once I had the digital colour palette (RGB & HEX) it was possible to convert that into DMC using some custom code. But I believe the RGB/ HEX values weren't accurate to the physical art itself. Also there are not enough DMC colours to match every possible colour so the "closest match" isn't always accurate at all

Yes Photoshop works for me but I already had it through work so it made sense, very expensive otherwise! There's a tool out there for everyone it just takes a bit of experimenting to find it. Good luck! 🙂

@@TheGiddyStitcher thank you!!!!!! 😃

Hi! So, first of all, apologies I can't help with your second question as I have no experience with embroidery machines. When you talk about size I assume you mean print size of your grid? The main thing there is just to make sure you're not putting too many stitches on one page, so they're nice and clear and readable. Generally around 70 stitches max is a good size to aim for per page, although to cover all the bases you can also consider including larger print (maybe 40 stitches per page) for those with poor eyesight, or a whole-pattern-on-one-page version for those who use the PDF on their digital device and prefer to just zoom in. As always with anything like this, bear in mind A4 vs US Letter paper sizes can sometimes cause problems so your layout needs to work on both. I hope that helped, if I misunderstood the question please let me know!

​@@TheGiddyStitcher Creating a page for an embroidery design and a page for cross stitches are different. Cross stitch size depends on the height and width of the one cross stitch so you have to type cross width and height not just the total design width and height when you create a dijital file. When you cross stitch it becomes a square. There is a height of it. You use a template fabric. Its size is fixed. In dijital format you can choose the cross stitch height and width. That was what I was talking about. However, with dijital format you can use any fabric and you do not have to draw anything on fabric. Machines does it. But I also suggest you if it is for dijital files, there is embird software which is the cheapest among the other ones. Wilkom price is insane. Embird has cross stitch feature. Even photoshop is more expensive than embird. You can use it to create templates so fast and see the rendered file and also the size of the stitches as you draw and this is powerful. I have seen that you use a plugin of photoshop that turns squares into 2 cross lines based on the color of that specific square in your design. However, using a software like that not only gives you the flexibility when you design but also may be in time you can use those design's dijital format for the products you want to sell. Many people creates T-shirts for ETSY for instance. Your designs would not be just for hand made but also those hand made design will have in dijital format and that may give you some opportunities in the future.

Woohoo! Thank you and welcome!

It sounds like you're maybe coming at it as more of an artist, maybe you've even got your design drawn or painted already? If that's the case it might be worth, just as a starting point, using a converter tool of some kind (paid ones like WinStitch, or free ones like FlossCross). It's not going to give you a perfect pattern out of the box but it's a start that you can then tidy up from there. As far as choosing the colours for detailed shading there's no substitute for just stitching up a small sample, but the conversion software could give you a good idea of which colours to try first.

​@@TheGiddyStitcher Thank you SO very much for your response. Honestly, after watching you video & seeing how you actually did a test run got me _seriously_ thinking that, I'm probably gonna have to bite the bullet & DO it for real, to see what it's going to look like. Poor, poor me, right?😂 I'm going to need to stitch some more, to get my answers. You pity me oh so much right now, don't you? 🤣🤣 If it works & if I remember I might try posting a short little video to show you how things worked out. Wish me luck. And again, thank you for the advice/ suggestion. 🍀

Haha, it absolutely is! I can't help with the "where" though, it seems a lot rarer in cross stitch than it is in knitting. I imagine most designers just put calls out on their social media...maybe someone needs to build a platform especially to connect designers with enthusiastic stitchers...hmmm....🤔

Woohoo! Awkward and proud! 😎😆

My official top three were Norway, Slovenia and Ukraine but I thought the biggest earworm was genuinely Finland (with an honourary mention to Lithuania). Did quite like Poland's at first but poor Luna just couldn't pull it off live and that staging was BIZARRE.