Photo2PatternFree cross stitch text generator
Cross stitch text generator — a name charted stitch by stitch
Type a name, a date or a motto, pick one of three counted alphabets — 5, 7 or 9 stitches to a capital — and this hands back the chart: every letter placed on the grid, a symbol in every cross, one DMC number per line and the exact count of crosses in each shade. It is free, needs no account and runs in this tab. The letters are bitmaps drawn cell by cell rather than a font squeezed down to seven pixels, which is why the crossbar of an e is still there at the smallest size the alphabet offers.
- 100% free
- No signup
- 3 alphabets: 5, 7, 9 rows
- 164 charted glyphs
- One DMC shade per line
The first 6 lines are charted, and past 240 characters the page says so rather than stopping you. A blank line in the middle is kept as a gap; blank lines at the top and bottom are trimmed off, because the chart is the stitching and nothing else. Currently 25 characters on 2 lines.
The workhorse. Seven rows to a capital, five to an x-height and two below the baseline for the tails of g, j, p, q and y, which is the smallest box a lowercase alphabet fits in without the tails colliding with the next line.
Centering is done in whole stitches. Where two lines differ by an odd number of stitches one side gets the extra column, and the table below says which.
1 is this alphabet’s own spacing. Zero runs the letters together and is how a monogram is set.
Measured from the last stitch of one word to the first of the next, so it is the gap you count on the cloth rather than a space character.
Counted below the descender well, not below the baseline, so a line with a “y” in it keeps the same visible gap as one without.
The cloth and the thread
None of this changes the chart — the stitch count is the same on every cloth. It decides how big the finished lettering comes out and how much floss it drinks.
One stitch measures 1.81 mm, so 14.0 of them fill an inch.
A DMC skein is about 8 m of six-strand floss, which US shops label 8.7 yd. Change it if yours sells a different put-up.
83 × 19 stitches, 285 full crosses
5.93 × 1.36 in on 14-count (15.1 × 3.4 cm)
Thread key — 2 shades in use
| Mark | DMC | Crosses | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| ■ | DMC 310Black | 183 | 64.2% |
| ● | DMC 3799Pewter Gray Vy Dk | 102 | 35.8% |
Every figure above is a count of crosses, not a rounding: the marks in the grid and the numbers in the key came from the same array. The lines as laid out reserved 2 rows that no cross reached into — a descender well nothing dropped into, or a blank line at one end — and those were trimmed off rather than counted as design you would buy cloth for. Printing splits into 2 pieces of 69 × 47 stitches on A4 the wide way round, with two columns repeated at each join.
Screen color is an approximation of floss, not a match. Every monitor is calibrated differently, and the published color data for dyed and molded goods varies between sources — for embroidery floss the disagreement between two independent color tables runs to a tenth of the range. Use the chart to pick candidates and the physical shade card, bead or brick to decide between them.
Where each line sits, and what it costs
| Line | Stitches wide | Starts in column | Crosses | Thread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home Sweet Home | 83 | 1 | 183 | DMC 310 |
| est. 2026 | 46 | 19 * | 102 | DMC 3799 |
“Starts in column” is counted from the left edge of the whole design, so it is the number to count across from your leftmost stitch rather than from the edge of the cloth. A star marks a line whose leftover space is an odd number of stitches. Half a stitch does not exist, so that line carries one more blank column on the right than on the left — one stitch off center, and nobody has ever spotted it in a finished piece.
- Finished lettering
- 5.93 × 1.36 in
- 15.1 × 3.4 cm on 14-count worked over one
- A capital measures
- 0.50 in
- 7 rows tall, which is 12.7 mm — the figure to check against the frame before you start
- Floss for the lot
- 4.8 m
- of single strand, 5.2 yd, which is one skein — a skein at these settings carries about 2,850 crosses
This figure is an estimate, not a measurement. It assumes 2 strands, 14-count fabric, about four cell-widths of thread per cross, 15% added for starts and ends, and 8 m of six-strand floss per skein. Every part of that is editable above, and your own shop’s guidance beats ours — buy the extra skein.
How to chart a word in counted stitches
Type it, size it, print it — and the sizing step is the one that decides everything downstream.
Type the lines the way they will sit on the cloth
One line in the box is one line of stitching, so a name over a date is two lines and not one with a space in it. A blank line in the middle is kept as a gap you can widen or narrow; blank lines at the top and bottom are thrown away, because a chart that opens with empty rows sends you to the shop for cloth you will never stitch on. Each line takes its own DMC number, which is how a sampler is normally worked — the name in one shade, the year under it in another.
Choose the alphabet by the height you have, not by the look you want
The height in stitches is the decision and everything else follows from it. A capital is 5 rows in the smallest alphabet, 7 in the block one and 9 in the serif, which on 14-count is 0.36, 0.50 and 0.64 inches — so the serif is nearly twice the letter for the same word. It costs width too: HOME SWEET HOME comes out 61 stitches across in the 5-row, 89 in the 7-row and 127 in the serif. Only the 7-row alphabet has lowercase; the other two are capitals and numerals, and if you type lowercase into them the page names the letters it cannot set rather than quietly leaving holes.
Print it sideways and work outwards from the middle
Anything past 69 stitches wide is split into A4 pieces turned landscape, and every join repeats two of its columns on the sheet next door, which is what lets you find row 14 again after the paper stops. Find the middle of your cloth by folding it in four, then use the line table on the page to count out to each line's first stitch — it gives the column every line starts in, measured from the left edge of the whole design. Where centering leaves an odd number of spare stitches the table marks it with a star: that line carries one more blank column on the right than on the left, because half a stitch does not exist.
Technical specifications
| The alphabets themselves | 3, drawn stitch by stitch rather than rasterized from an outline font: 5 rows to a capital with 26 capitals and 10 numerals, 7 rows with a full lowercase over a 2-row descender well, and 9 rows of single-stitch serif capitals. 164 glyphs between them, each carrying its own width |
|---|---|
| What the extra height costs | 9.2 crosses per capital at 5 rows, 15.3 at 7 and 23.0 at 9, averaged over A to Z. GRANDMA is 31 × 5 stitches and 75 crosses in the smallest alphabet against 63 × 9 and 182 in the serif — 2.4 times the thread for the same seven letters |
| Letter widths | Variable, not monospaced: 3.3 stitches on average at 5 rows, 5.1 at 7, 7.1 at 9. Inside the 7-row alphabet an I is 3 stitches wide and an M is 7, which is why a chart width cannot be worked out by multiplying the letter count |
| Spacing, in whole stitches | Between letters and between words, both editable, both counted from the last stitch of one to the first of the next: 1 and 3 in the 5-row alphabet, 1 and 4 in the 7-row, 2 and 5 in the serif. Zero between letters butts the boxes together, which is how a monogram is set |
| Naming the thread | One DMC shade per line, taken from all 454 by number or by name — 310, dmc 310 and ecru all resolve, and the 3 non-numeric codes are White, Ecru and B5200. A number DMC does not publish is refused by name rather than snapped to the nearest |
| Where it refuses | 6 lines, 400 stitches across and 240 characters. 400 stitches is 28.6 in of stitching on 14-count, which is already wider than most aida is sold; the line and character limits are warnings that say what to do rather than walls |
| Files it hands over | A PNG of the chart, the thread key as CSV, and the grid as monospaced text with a column ruler every 10 stitches — that last one pastes into a forum post or a notes app intact. Print splits at 69 × 47 stitches on A4 turned sideways, 2 columns repeated at every join |
| What reaches a server | Nothing. The alphabets ship inside the page, so the letterforms are already on your machine before you type — there is no font to fetch and no chart to request |
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no script or cursive alphabet?
Because script in cross stitch is not cross stitch. Joined letterforms on fabric are worked in backstitch or stem stitch — a continuous line running between the holes in the weave, drawn freehand along a traced outline — and a chart of full crosses cannot express a stroke that changes direction inside a cell. Every counted script you have seen is either a very large alphabet where the curve has enough cells to fake itself, which starts around 20 rows a capital and stops being lettering, or it is a backstitch diagram printed as lines rather than squares. The three alphabets here are all full crosses, so all three are upright by necessity rather than by taste.
Can I upload my own font and chart that instead?
No, and the reason is that the result would be worse rather than merely different. Rendering an outline font at 7 pixels and thresholding it is a lossy operation with no good answer: the crossbar of a lowercase e falls between two rows and disappears, the counter of an a fills in, and the stem of an i lands on a half-pixel and either doubles or vanishes. Hinting exists to fight exactly this and it is tuned for screen anti-aliasing, which a chart cannot use — a cross is stitched or it is not. The letters here were drawn on the grid at the size they are worked at, so nothing had to be thrown away by a rasterizer.
My two lines are different lengths. How do I keep them centered on each other?
Set the alignment to centered and read the offsets out of the line table rather than measuring the printout. The table gives the column each line starts in, counted from the left edge of the whole design, so you count across from your leftmost stitch rather than from the edge of the cloth — which is the measurement that drifts. The case worth knowing about is an odd remainder: if the shorter line is, say, 7 stitches narrower than the longest, centering leaves 3 blank columns on one side and 4 on the other, and the page marks that line with a star. A stitch of asymmetry at 14-count is 1.8 mm and has never been spotted in a finished piece, but it is better to know it is there than to spend an evening looking for the miscount.
Why does it refuse a DMC number instead of using the nearest one?
Because the shade number is the one thing on this page that is bought rather than calculated. Everything else — the width, the stitch count, the finished size — follows from arithmetic and can be checked at a glance, but a floss number is copied off a bobbin onto a shopping list and then handed to somebody at a counter, and a silent substitution survives all the way to the finished piece. 3799 and 3790 are four digits apart and two entirely different grays. Type the number, the number with DMC in front of it, or a name like Ecru, and it will find it in the 454 shades; type something that is not one of them and it says so and stops.
Why do the letters not tuck together the way they do in a word processor?
There is no kerning on a counted grid, because kerning moves letters by fractions of their width and a cell cannot be part-stitched. A pair like AV or To sits visibly loose in counted lettering and every alphabet in every printed pattern book has the same gap, so the eye reads it as normal rather than as a mistake. What you can do instead is set the gap between letters to zero, which butts the glyph boxes together and is exactly how a monogram is worked, or add a stitch of gap where a specific pair looks tight — the spacing fields take whole stitches and apply to every pair, so any tuning you do is global rather than per pair.
How much floss will a name actually take?
Far less than a skein, which is the useful thing to know before buying one. A name of 130 crosses on 14-count with two strands in the needle uses roughly 2 meters of single strand, against about 48 meters of usable thread on an 8-meter six-strand skein — so one skein covers something on the order of 3,000 crosses of lettering. The number on the page is an estimate and says what it assumes, because thread use moves with tension, with how long a length you cut and with how much you waste starting and finishing. The one case where it misleads is a piece worked in many shades: five lines in five colors still needs five skeins, however few stitches each of them is.
Can I stitch this on something other than aida?
Yes — the chart does not change, only its size does. A grid of counted crosses is fabric-agnostic: the same 89 by 7 stitches is 6.4 inches wide on 14-count aida, 4.9 on 18-count, and exactly 6.4 again on 28-count linen worked over two threads, because that lands on the same 14 stitches to the inch. Set the count and the over-two switch on the page and the finished measurement follows. Plastic canvas, waste canvas over a T-shirt and 6-count binca all work off the same chart too; the only thing that changes with the cloth is how large a capital comes out, which the page states in inches and millimeters beside the chart.
About counted alphabets, and why they are drawn rather than typeset
A counted alphabet is not a typeface at a small size — it is a set of letters designed on a grid, where every stitch is a deliberate decision and there is no half of one. That constraint decides the shapes completely. Below about seven rows to a capital a lowercase alphabet stops being possible: an x-height needs at least five rows to hold a bowl and a crossbar, an ascender needs two more above it and a descender two more below, and the tails of g, j, p, q and y then have to clear whatever is on the next line. Which is why the alphabets printed in pattern books for a hundred and fifty years cluster at five, seven and nine rows, and why the small ones are capitals only. The nine-row serif here is built the way a nineteenth-century sampler alphabet was: single-stitch strokes with a three-stitch foot at every stem end, capitals and numerals and nothing else, because a marking sampler existed to put initials and a year onto household linen rather than to set prose.
The height is the only decision that matters, and it is more expensive than it looks. Averaged over A to Z, a capital costs 9.2 crosses at five rows, 15.3 at seven and 23.0 at nine — so the serif is two and a half times the thread and roughly twice the width for the same word. Two other things surprise people. Letters are not the same width: inside the seven-row alphabet an I is three stitches and an M is seven, so a chart width cannot be guessed by multiplying the letter count, which is the arithmetic most people try first and then quietly abandon. And there is no kerning, because kerning moves letters by fractions and a cell cannot be part-stitched — an AV pair sits loose in every counted alphabet ever printed, and the fix is to close the letter gap to zero for a monogram rather than to nudge one pair. Once you have a stitch count, the cloth decides the size and nothing else does: the cross stitch size calculator carries the over-two term that makes 28-count linen finish exactly where 14-count aida does, and the aida cloth calculator adds the plain border a hoop or a frame will eat, which is larger than the lettering on most small pieces.
What other generators get wrong is almost always the same thing: they render a TrueType font at seven pixels, threshold it, and hand back a grid in which half the lowercase has lost its crossbars — then they show it as a picture with no stitch count and no thread key, which is a preview rather than a chart. The list of shades with a cross count against each is what you take to a shop, so it is the deliverable here, alongside a symbol in every cell for anybody who cannot separate two adjacent DMC grays by eye or is working from a grayscale printout. If the words are going around a picture rather than standing alone, the cross stitch pattern maker charts the picture against the same 454 shades so the two halves share a thread list, and needlepoint takes the same lettering on canvas at a coarser count. The same grid of letters also works outside thread entirely — the five-row alphabet is what fits on a Perler pegboard, where a bead is a cell and 29 pegs is the whole board. For lettering meant to be read on a screen rather than stitched, text to ASCII art does the same job in characters instead of crosses.
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What happens to the words you type
Nothing you type here leaves the tab. The arithmetic runs in JavaScript on your own machine — there is no server to send it to, no account to sign in to and nothing stored between visits. Close the tab and nothing of it remains.
That matters more here than on the pages that take a photograph, because a name is the most personal thing anyone types into this site. The three alphabets are inside the page you have already downloaded, so nothing is sent away to be turned into letters — the grid is built beside you rather than fetched. The PNG, the thread list and the text chart are all written by the tab and handed straight to your downloads folder.