Your First Pattern: Three Ways to Start

The fastest way to a finished pattern: open the editor, click Upload Your Photo (or Try a Sample Image if you just want to see how it works), and drag in a picture. Choose a width and height in stitches and how many DMC thread colors to use, then click Generate pattern.

You land straight in the full editor with the converted result — nothing is final at this point. Repaint cells, merge colors, resize, or mirror the design before you download anything.

• Simple, high-contrast subjects convert best — a pet portrait, a single flower, a clear silhouette against a plain background.
• A good beginner size is 50–80 stitches wide. Larger sizes preserve more detail but take longer to stitch.
• 10–15 colors is a manageable start; add more later if you want finer detail.

Prefer to design by hand? Choose New Pattern in the editor to start from an empty 80×80 grid with a starter palette of 16 common DMC colors. Every tool — pencil, fill, shapes, mirror, resize — works exactly the same whether your pattern started from a photo or from nothing at all.

Browsing the catalog and want to tweak a design instead of starting over? Any pattern in the catalog has an Open in editor option on its page — it loads straight into the same editor, fully editable, without touching the original catalog copy. Saving creates your own separate copy.