You have a design in mind. Maybe the dog that always ends up on the sofa. The line only the two of you understand. A pattern that came to you on a walk.
Until now that usually ended on squared paper — and then at the question of which thread
this particular blue is supposed to be. The
The quickest route is the direct one: pick up the pencil and draw. Every cell is one stitch, every click places it. Add an eraser, a fill tool and a colour picker — for your first lettering, a heart or a border, nothing more is needed.
If you want to start properly, start small. A design 60 stitches wide is a weekend's work and a finished piece in your hands. That motivates far more than a grand project sitting in the basket for half a year.
None of it is permanent. Every step can be undone, and areas can be moved, mirrored, rotated or scaled — go ahead and see what happens.
Sometimes the design already exists: a portrait, a snapshot of the dog, your child's drawing. The image assistant lays a grid over it, reduces the colours to a stitchable number and finds the closest real thread for each one.
What works well are clear shapes with strong contrast: animals, faces in close-up, lettering, silhouettes. What struggles are wide landscapes, fine hair texture, and anything that barely separates from its background in colour.
One test always works: hold the photo at arm's length, or squint at it. Whatever you can still make out is what you will make out in the finished pattern.
And the important part: the result is a suggestion, not a finished chart. With faces especially, a handful of cells around the eyes decide the likeness. You place those yourself afterwards — and that is exactly where a conversion becomes your design.
The most common question before buying fabric. The arithmetic is simple:
Width in inches = stitches ÷ fabric count
On 14-count Aida, a pattern 140 stitches wide comes out at 10 inches. The same 140 stitches on 18-count Aida measure just under 8 — same design, smaller stitches, finer result.
| Width | What fits | Realistic timeframe |
|---|---|---|
| 60–80 | lettering, hearts, symbols | a weekend |
| 100–140 | animals, clear subjects | a few weeks |
| 180–250 | portraits, soft gradients | a winter project |
Honesty demands: 200 × 200 stitches is 40,000 stitches in total. Entirely doable — but better known beforehand than on the third evening.
The most common beginner's mistake is the colour count. Thirty shades separated by nuances do not look finer on fabric, they look restless — and mean threading and securing thirty times over.
Twelve well-chosen colours nearly always look better. Dare to cut back. What looks like a loss on screen turns into clarity on fabric.
For outlines there is backstitch: a fine line running across the grid instead of filling a cell. A design that felt somehow flat gains its edge from it. If something still seems missing from your result, this is very often why.
Done? Then out comes a PDF you can actually work from: cover page, overview, symbol legend and the thread list to take to the shop. Large patterns spread across several pages automatically, each with row and column numbers along the edges so nothing slips while you stitch.
One detail that saves trouble later: the PDF is also your project file. Your pattern sits inside it, encrypted. Load the same PDF back into the editor and everything returns — no second file format to keep and later hunt for.
Before the PDF is created you have to agree once, actively — without that tick the server produces nothing. It is worth knowing briefly what it covers.
What you get: the permanent right to use, share, publish, print, sell and stitch the finished chart — privately and commercially, explicitly including in books and other printed works. The one condition is attribution: the origin and link must stay visible in the PDF. Presenting the pattern as entirely your own is not permitted.
What you give: by agreeing, you grant on-co.de the right to use, show and adapt your design as well. Your copyright stays entirely with you — you may keep using, showing and exploiting your own design. On export, your pattern is stored on the server for this purpose.
What you vouch for: that you hold the rights to everything that went into your design. For patterns you drew yourself this is straightforward. For a photo from an image search, a film character or a brand logo, it is not.
The full wording appears in the export dialog, fully readable rather than hidden behind a link. Read it once properly — after that you know where you stand for every future project.
The best first design is one that will be finished this week. A name, a date, a small animal. After that you know the tools, you know how big your fabric needs to be, and the next design can be the one you actually had in mind.