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How to Read a Cross Stitch Chart
One square on the chart is one stitch on the fabric. Everything else — symbols, heavy lines, arrows, the key — exists to help you keep track of which square you are on.
The four things on every chart
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| A square with a symbol | One full cross stitch, in the shade that symbol stands for |
| An empty square | No stitch — the fabric shows through |
| Heavy line every 10 squares | Counting aid only; nothing is stitched differently there |
| The key or floss list | Which DMC number each symbol means, and how many stitches of it you need |
Charts use symbols as well as colour for a practical reason: two shades of the same blue are nearly impossible to tell apart on screen or in print, but X and O never are. If you are working from a colour chart in poor light, the symbol is the thing to trust.
Where to start
Almost everyone starts in the middle, and there is a good reason: if you start at a corner and miscount, the design runs off the fabric. Starting at the centre means any error stays local.
- Find the centre of the chart. Half the width across, half the height down.
- Find the centre of the fabric. Fold it in half one way, then the other; the creases cross at the middle.
- Count out from there to the nearest block of stitching and begin. Working outward from the centre in blocks of ten keeps your counting honest.
Keeping your place
Losing your place is the most common way a piece goes wrong — not bad stitching, just a row counted twice. Three habits that prevent it:
- Work one colour block at a time rather than jumping around the chart. Finish the shape you are on before moving.
- Mark off what you finish. A printed copy and a highlighter is still the most reliable method there is.
- Check against a heavy line every ten squares. If your stitching and the chart disagree, you have lost at most ten stitches.
How big will it come out?
Nothing on the chart tells you the finished size, because the chart does not know what fabric you are using. Size comes entirely from the fabric count — how many stitches fit in one inch:
Finished width = chart width in stitches ÷ fabric count. A 100-stitch-wide chart is 7.1″ on 14-count, 6.3″ on 16-count and 5.6″ on 18-count. Same chart, same stitches, different size. The fabric calculator does this for every count at once, including how much fabric to cut.
Full and part stitches
Most charts are made of full cross stitches, one per square, and that is all our maker produces. Printed designs sometimes also use fractional stitches to soften a curve, or backstitch outlines drawn as lines along the grid rather than symbols inside it. If you meet those in a chart from elsewhere, they are marked separately in the key — a symbol inside a square is always a full stitch.
Keep going
About the colours. DMC does not publish official RGB values, so every on-screen colour table — including ours — is an approximation. Our 456-shade table is merged from three independent open datasets by taking the median of each channel; 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.