Making a cross-stitch pattern out of your image is probably the most tedious, time consuming part of the process (other than the actual stitching, of course). I've been using Adobe Illustrator to make my patterns, and that's what I'll be using in this how-to. I realize not everyone has access to AI, so I won't go too far into program specific detail. There are plenty of other (sometimes free) programs that will do basically the same things I'm doing here.
STEP ONE - Find the Borders
The first thing I do after opening the image is find the borders of the image itself (when opening the image, you might want to enlarge it so the lines you make later don't run together and make the pattern unreadable). I use the line drawing tool to draw horizontal lines at the edges of the top and bottom-most pixels and vertical lines at the left and right-most pixels. This will help find the exact center of the image itself without having to worry about whether or not you added an equal amount of space around the edges. Adding a margin can be done much later in the sewing process.
When drawing my border lines, I like to make them a little thicker than I plan to make the actual grid and of a brighter, more visible color. When this step is done, it'll look a little something like this:
STEP TWO - Find the Center
This step will probably vary depending on what image editing software you use. In AI, it's pretty easy. At worst, you'll just have to do some counting and simple math.
I start off by using the pencil tool to draw little carrot shapes ( > ) with the point on the top and bottom lines along the side of the image. Then I draw one kind of floating in the middle between those two. In AI, I can select all three carrots and use the align tool to distribute them evenly by the center of the shapes. This will move the middle floating carrot to the exact center of the ones on the top and bottom, giving you the place to put your center line! Repeat the same steps for the top, and you'll be ready to draw your center lines:
(click on the image for a better view)
If you don't have the ability to align your little arrows like I did in the program you're using, you might actually have to count the pixels from top to bottom/side to side and divide them by two the old fashioned way. If you come up with an odd number and it doesn't divide evenly (or if your little carrot aligns itself in the center of a pixel instead of in between rows), just shift over or up to the nearest space. In big pattern like this one, half a pixel isn't that big of a deal, but in really small patterns you might keep it in mind. But like I said, it's not that big a deal.
STEP THREE - Drawing More Lines
This is where the process can get a little tedious. Using the line tool again, start making lines in one direction using the pixels themselves as a guide to start making the grid. Make sure your lines are thin enough to not obscure the pixels too much, and use a color that contrasts with both the image and your center lines. Once you get a few drawn, you can use the align tool to space them out evenly (if you're using Illustrator) and then copy and paste the group so you don't have to draw every single line. If you're not using Illustrator but another program that uses layers, make the lines on a separate layer from the image (to avoid certain disaster) and do the copy/paste thing.
To make the sewing easier, I like to break up my grid into half-inch "blocks". In this case, I'm cross-stitching on 14-count fabric, meaning that there are going to be 14 stitches per inch. In my pattern, then, I make ever 7th line a little thicker. When the grid is done, you'll have little squares to use as reference points!
Now, once you have all of the lines drawn in one direction, you can do one of two things. You can either repeat the same process of line drawing. Or you can copy the lines you already drew, rotate them 90 degrees and align/resize them to fit your image to complete the grid. I suppose it depends on what program you're using. If you are in fact using Illustrator, the second of the two choices is definitely the way to go.
This is just one quadrant of the whole image, but when it's done, it should look something like this:
And there you have your completed cross-stitch pattern! In Part 3, I'll go over the thread color picking process. It's more exciting than it sounds, I promise!
