As you learn to cross stitch embroider with more skill and precision, you often find that you would like to cross stitch something unique or something which you cannot find a pattern for. If you encounter this challenge, you two choices, either make your own pattern or give up and call it a day!  Making your own pattern is not that hard and can provide you with an amazing sense of accomplishment once you have finished cross stitching your design.

Designing your own cross stitch pattern will allow you the freedom to create just about any design you want. It will let you design your favorite photo cross stitch and other memorabilia.

Supplies You Will Need

To design your own cross stitch pattern you will need to gather up the following items:  graph paper, a sharp pencil, a good eraser, colored pencils and possibly a floss color chart from your favorite embroidery designs thread maker.

You can find good pencils and erasers in the art supply store or even in the office supply section of your local drugstore. You may want to use a very sharp pencil and a neat eraser that will allow you to delete any marks and not smudge them on the paper. It is advisable to use the gummy eraser form that is usually used by draftsmen to erase the marks on your pattern. Graphing papers can be sold in any bookstores and school supplies or better yet print it out in a paper using Excel or any graphing tool. Your graph paper should have at least 8 square per inch.

Once you have drawn your design then you will want to shade it in using your colored pencils and thread color guide.  This will allow you to have a list of thread colors to purchase from your craft store to stitch your design.

The easiest way to deal with the size of your final design is to use graph paper which as the same number of squares in it that your cross stitch fabric does.  If you are using 16 count fabrics, then if you design on graph paper with 16 squares per inch, your design and your final stitched project will be the exact same size. It is very basic to keep the final measurement of your project in mind when you’re doing your design.

Making Your Design

To make your first cross stitch chart you will want to start by drawing your design and, for the most part, ignoring the lines of the graph paper. After your design is finished, that’s the time you can convert it to cross stitch.  To do this, you will work to square off round edges and mark the areas where you will need to do partial stitching and all of your over-stitching for finalizing your project.

If you would like your design to have a three dimensional look to it you will want to add some simple shading.  Do this by imagining a light-source and where the shadows on the page would be if the light source was shining on your design. It takes some time to fully grasp the process and does take time to see the whole picture.

Once your shading is complete, then you can color in your design with your colored pencils. This will let you visualize the final design and lets you decide whether a particular color is applicable for the entire project. This is where you thread guide comes into picture; the one used to match up designs that will allow you to create a list to purchase for the project.

Designing your own cross stitch embroidery design patterns can be a really rewarding thing to do. It’s a bit difficult and time consuming to really memorize everything but allows you to be able to design anything you can imagine to stitch. You can invent the best design in a piece of paper and make it come to life when applied to your fabric. You imagination is the limit.