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Turn a picture into a cross stitch pattern

A picture, a name, or an empty grid — you get a counted cross stitch pattern: a symbol chart, a DMC floss list and the fabric size, with every stitch editable. Stitchers call the grid itself a chart; the two words mean the same thing here.

456 DMC shades · your picture is read on your own device and never sent anywhere.

Your chart
Tap to choose a picture or drop one here · JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP

What you get

A cross stitch chart is a grid where every square is one stitch and every symbol is one shade of thread. This tool builds that grid for you and works out the rest: which DMC shades come closest, how many stitches of each you will use, and how big the piece comes out on your fabric.

  1. Bring something in. A picture, a word, or an empty grid. Pictures are reduced to the number of colours you ask for, and each of those is paired with the closest shade in our table by number.
  2. Edit anything. Nothing is locked. Pick a colour from the palette and stitch, unpick, fill or draw — the floss list updates as you go.
  3. Take it away. Chart as SVG or PNG with symbols and legend, floss list as text, or print the whole thing. All free, no account.
About the colours. DMC does not publish official RGB values, so every on-screen colour table is an approximation — ours is built from three public datasets by taking the median of each channel, and the values are our own estimates rather than DMC figures. Use it to plan the design; check a real floss card before buying thread.

What converts well

A chart has one stitch per square and a handful of colours, so it cannot hold everything a photograph holds. Pictures with clear shapes and separated colours come through best; soft, low-contrast photographs turn to mush at any stitch count you would actually want to sew.

PictureHow it converts
Flat illustrations, logos, letteringBest — crisp edges survive down to 60–80 stitches wide
Photos with a clear subject and plain backgroundGood at 100+ stitches wide, usually after tidying edges by hand
Busy or low-contrast photographsPoor — raise the colour count and the width, or simplify the picture first
Very large filesFine; the picture is scaled down in your browser before charting

Detail lives in the stitch count, not the file: 60 stitches is a small motif, 100–150 is a framed picture, and beyond that you are committing to a long project. The fabric calculator shows what each size becomes in inches.

Where to go next

Alphabet & letter patternsType a name, pick a style, get a pattern. Fabric calculatorStitched size and cut size for every count. How to read a patternSymbols, centre marks and where to start.

About the colours. DMC does not publish official RGB values, so every on-screen colour table — including ours — is an estimate rather than a manufacturer figure. Ours is built from three public datasets by taking the median of each channel (how we built it); use it to plan the shape of a design, and check a real floss card before you buy thread. Charts you make here are yours, and nothing you upload leaves your browser: the converter runs entirely on your own device, with no account and no upload.