It was a very long process, but it was neat seeing the painting slowly emerging on the fabric. I kept trying to line up the photocopy to the same spot on the fabric each time – pretty much I did a few stitches in one colour, put the photocopy over the fabric to see if I needed to change colour yet, lifted up the photocopy to keep stitching, etc.
To create the pattern, I put the acetate over the fabric and just started stitching. So, it ended up being 11 stitches per inch, 22 per inch for my first project in close to 3 decades would have made me insane.
For this piece I also just guessed at the fabric – I bought some 22 count hardanger fabric that was on sale, and decided to stitch over every second thread of the fabric. I had no clue as it had been so long since I’d stitched, I didn’t even remember that I’d be using only a few strands at a time instead of the whole thread of floss (each skein has 6 strands spun into one thread). I matched the colours with the photocopy as best as I could (trying to not get too many different colours) and I just guessed at how much floss I would need. I’d brought the photocopy to the needlecraft shop to buy the floss I thought I’d be needing. What I ended up doing to actually create the pattern was to colour photocopy my painting onto a sheet of clear acetate (like you’d use for overhead projectors). This was ok for me as a start because I wasn’t sure how well my painting would transfer into another media, so I wasn’t too worried about having to do the pattern by hand. The iPad app could however record my stitches (by me entering them manually, it has DMC thread charts and some other neat features). The first painting I decided to use as an experiment was my digital painting “David.” The app I downloaded couldn’t turn my painting into a pattern (unless I bought the desktop version, MacStitch, which was around the $35-65 USD range depending on which features you wanted). It was only about $2, so I figured that might be useful. I looked online and downloaded an app called “Cross Stitch 2 Go” on my iPad.
#Macstitch winstitch how to#
Of course, I had no idea how to do that in practice.
I was thinking it would be neat to be able to have other people be able to basically make their own versions of my paintings, so I came up with the idea of turning some of my paintings and drawings into cross stitch patterns. So I gave the craft up, and only thought about it again about six months ago. I lived in a small town so the availability of patterns and such was very limited at the best of times, so there certainly wasn’t anything modern that I could buy. I hadn’t cross stitched since I was a little kid, when I got older I decided I really didn’t like the traditional patterns and kits that you could buy. It’s pretty flexible which I like, and I decided to try and use the paintings I’ve done with the app in another media – cross stitch. I’ve found it to be really helpful in allowing me to draw and paint again, even if it is digitally. About a week ago I wrote a post about the ArtRage app that I’ve been playing with over the last year or so.
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