computers for designing

Why Use a Computer for Cross Stitch Design?

If you currently design your own cross stitch charts or adapt designs you have seen elsewhere you might consider using a computer program to help you. You may be sceptical about computers, but they really can make things easier, not more complicated. Try to see the computer as a tool to do the dull parts of the task quickly. The program has been written to make it as easy as possible for you to do the designing. That’s the hard part!

Drawing a design on graph paper is a slow process involving a large selection of coloured pencils roughly matched to a thread chart. Imagine how much time you would save by having a selection of thread charts available within the program, and a palette conveniently arranged beside your grid showing up to 255 colours at one time. To draw you would simply click the mouse on the required colour then begin placing it in the design. And of course it is just as quick to change your mind and alter the colours. This means you are much more likely to experiment with colour and the quality of your work will improve as a result.

The computer will do repetitive tasks quickly and accurately and you should use this to your advantage when drawing your design. For example you don’t have to draw stitch by stitch when creating a border. Blocks of stitches can be copied, reflected and rotated when placing them around the design. The program will generate a number of geometric shapes and fill them with a complex pattern in a few seconds, it will use the typing fonts supplied with Windows to generate cross stitch text for you and it will allow you to place motifs anywhere in your design.

However the most important way that the computer can save you time and improve your designing is in the editing capabilities. It takes no time at all to make small changes to the position of stitches, or to the shading and if you are unsatisfied you can simply undo the changes. You can reposition elements of the design, scale them up or down and quickly assess the effect. You can also view your design in a variety of different colour schemes.

The computer will present the design area in a very adaptable way. Instead of resorting to scissors and Sellotape™ if the graph paper is the wrong size you are able to extend your grid by a specified number of stitches, and similarly you can reduce it to fit appropriately around your design. The program also contains a number of templates including standard card apertures. Simply tell it what stitch count you are using and it will present you with a design grid that will fit the card. You can zoom in close to the part of the design you are working on, making it comfortable to work however good or bad your eyesight.

You may feel satisfied with your design on paper but you never really know how well it works until it has been stitched. Think of the confidence it would give you to be able to visualise this in advance. The computer is able to show you a simulation of your design stitched on the fabric of your choice. This enables you to decide whether it works more effectively on Aida or Linen and you can also compare the result on a variety of different fabric colours.

A computer is essential if you want to undertake a very complex design such as converting a photograph to cross stitch. Imagine how long it would take you to match 30 or 40 thread colours by eye to the colours in the photograph, and that is before you begin to copy the image. The program will do this for you automatically and thus turns what would be several days work into less than a minute. Of course you may still want to edit the conversion to get rid of unnecessary background or unwanted detail but the program makes this easy. For example you can clone a part of the sky to cover an unwanted tree in the background.

What about those tedious jobs left to do when the design is complete, such as compiling a key, assigning symbols to all the different threads used and calculating how much of each thread will be needed. With a computer you can forget them. They are already done. Think how much easier to read a computer printout is, especially when you can control how many squares per inch appear and how many pages it uses. It certainly looks more professional if you want to give a design to a friend to stitch or perhaps try to sell some of your work.

Using a computer to create cross stitch charts makes a laborious process more enjoyable, and enables you to experiment with your ideas. You can produce unique and personal charts quickly, leaving more time to stitch the results.

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