What's new in Stitchmate

A big editor update: reusable motifs, counting from the middle, and layers that carry everything on them.

• Motifs. Save any part of a chart as a motif and place it again wherever you like: on this pattern, on your next one, as many times as you want. Drag it into position, scale, rotate, flip or warp it, and flatten it into stitches when it sits right; its backstitches come along. A built-in library of animals, food, seasonal pieces and symbols gets you started, and your own motifs live on the home screen under Motifs, where you can rename them, tag them and sort them into folders. Open one there to edit it and save it back. In the editor: the Motif tool in the left toolbar, or select some stitches and choose Save as motif.
• Count from the center. Hover a stitch and the bottom bar tells you how far it is from the center lines ("3 left of center · 2 above center"). A selection's label shows how many cells sit on each side of the center, so "am I even?" is a glance. And rulers can now number from the center, 0 on the center lines and growing outward: View settings > Rulers, or App Settings > Ruler Numbers. The same option is in the PDF and SVG export, so the printed chart counts the way you stitch.
• Layers carry their lines. Backstitches, French knots, beads, text and motifs now belong to the layer they were made on: hide the layer and they hide, delete it and they go, duplicate or flatten it and they come along. Right-click one for Move to layer. French knots and beads got a right-click menu of their own.
• Move a selection, lines and all. Move mode drags the stitches; the outline's backstitches and embellishments travel with them when you want them to (the toggles are in the selection menu). Paste lands ready to move, the selection box and handles show at every zoom, and rotating shows the angle, with Shift snapping to 45°.
• Reference image. A Lock button keeps the overlay from moving under a stray drag, and crafts with backstitch get an "Above backstitches" layer order.
• Faster on big charts. Selecting, moving and transforming on a 2000×2000 chart no longer stalls between frames.

Happy stitching!

A round of polish for working on a smaller screen.

• Tablet and phone layout. Menus, panels and the drawing surface got a tidy-up so the editor feels at home on a tablet or a phone, not like a shrunken desktop. We tested it on a Samsung Galaxy Tab with the S Pen and on an iPad with the Apple Pencil, and it stays smooth on both.
• Text in PNG and SVG exports. Text you added to a pattern used to come out as an empty patch in PNG and SVG charts. It now shows up exactly as it does in the editor.

Vector charts, plus a big pass over the editor on touch devices.

• Export your chart as an SVG. A proper vector chart that stays sharp at any size and prints at true measurements — one square lands on a real size on paper. Choose full color or black and white, and add a color key alongside the chart. Top-left menu > Export > SVG. It's also one of the files you can tick into your download bundle, so it goes out with the rest of your listing in a single ZIP. A Seller feature — every tier can open it and preview the chart before deciding.
• A roomier editor on phones and tablets. The touch layout got a rework, with a lot more room for the pattern itself. Tested on iPhone and on iPad with Apple Pencil; Android tablet testing is coming shortly.
• PDF export works on iPhone and iPad again. The PDF preview failed to load on iOS Safari — nothing rendered at all. Fixed, along with a separate crash on older iPads when importing a photo.

Plus a handful of smaller fixes from real-device testing.

Let me know what you think — use the contact form, or email hello[at]stitchmate.app. Happy stitching!

PDF export got a tidy-up and two things sellers have been asking for.

• A cleaner export panel. The settings are regrouped so the things you touch every time sit at the top, and the fiddly knobs are tucked away until you want them. Same options, a lot less scrolling.
• Your own cover and back pages. Upload a PDF and it becomes the front cover, the back page, or both — your branding, your care notes, your shop links, printed as part of the pattern. Export settings > Your own pages. A Seller feature: every tier can build and preview it, and the download comes unstamped on the Seller plan.
• Download everything as one ZIP. Choose which files go in — the PDF, a preview image, a black-and-white chart, a Pattern Keeper file, and more — name them the way you want, and get a single archive ready to list. Export settings > Download bundle.

Plus a few bug fixes along the way. Happy stitching!

Marking off your outlines in progress mode just got a lot nicer.

• Drag along a line to mark it. No more tapping segment by segment — sweep along an outline and everything you cross is marked. Dragging with the unmark tool (or the right mouse button) clears the same way.
• The color list follows your outlines. With the target set to Backstitch, the panel lists your outline colors with their own counts and mark-all actions, and picking one highlights what's left of it on the chart.
• "Only the chosen color" now covers backstitch too. With a color picked, a drag along a mixed outline marks only that color's lines — and undo now works for backstitch marks, just like stitches.

Happy stitching!

The biggest release of the year: a way to track what you've stitched, a proper home for your colors, outlines generated for you, and two new crafts.

• Track your progress as you stitch. Open a pattern in progress mode and mark off what's done — the chart remembers, so you always know where you were. Park a thread you'll come back to, flag a mistake to frog, and highlight the block you're working. Your library shows how far along every project is, and the progress syncs across your devices.
• Backstitch, generated for you. Outlines traced from your photo and added as real, editable backstitch — the detail that makes a face read as a face. From image import, or the backstitch tool in the editor. It's algorithmic, never AI. It's best viewed as a good starting point and inspiration: expect to spend a bit of time cleaning up stray backstitches or add some by hand.
• A real editor for your palettes and your stash. Build a palette from any brand's catalogue, drop in a photo to pull its colors out, remap the whole thing to another brand, and see it as cloth rather than a list of chips — which colors carry the piece, what sits against what, where the gaps are. Your stash lives beside it: mark what you own, edit it a brand at a time, and convert photos using only the threads in your box. Signed in, both follow you between devices.
• Fuse beads and C2C crochet. Two more crafts in the same editor. Perler-style bead charts on a pegboard rather than cloth, with bead palettes from five brands. And corner-to-corner graphghans: the diagonal chart, a row panel that keeps your place while you work, written row-by-row instructions in the PDF and as a text file, and yarn worked out by the yard. Like every craft here they speak their own language, down to the materials and the export.
• A map of the pattern in your PDF. One page near the front shows the whole design small, with the page grid drawn over it and every section labelled — so "which page is the cat's face on?" is answered before you start hunting. Export settings > Section Map.
• Print at true size. Needlepoint, diamond painting and fuse beads charts print 1:1 with the finished piece, with a calibration bar on every page. Export settings > Tile Size > Actual size.
• A steadier canvas. Lock scrolling from the zoom pill so a stray trackpad swipe can't shift your work mid-stitch, plus a long list of fixes across the editor, the library and PDF export.

Happy stitching!

The home screen now leads with your work instead of a welcome mat, plus two export fixes that came in from sellers.

• Your patterns, front and center. The big "Make a new pattern" box no longer takes the top of the screen once you have work to come back to — your library does. Unfinished conversions sit in their own column beside it and stay put as you scroll, and you can still drop an image anywhere on the page to start a pattern.
• Find any pattern fast. Filter your library by name, and sort by last modified, date created, name, color count or size. Three layout modes now sit behind one control, with a roomier grid as the default so thumbnails are actually big enough to recognize — and every tile shows its size and color count without hovering.
• Line breaks in cover text. Typing Enter in the cover fields printed as one long line, and a blank line between two paragraphs disappeared entirely. Your line breaks now come through exactly as typed, and the Author field has room for two lines so your name can sit above your shop link. Thank you to the seller who reported this.
• Chart alignment is yours to pick. Chart tiles anchor to the top left of the page by default, but you can switch back to centered under Export settings > Pattern Pages > Chart alignment — handy if you trim or mount your pages.

Happy stitching!

• Stitchmate is now a multi-craft editor. Cross stitch, needlepoint, and diamond painting are all first-class: pick the craft when you create a pattern, and every surface follows — the tools, the rendering, the materials, and the vocabulary. Tent stitches on mesh canvas, drills on adhesive canvas, crosses on Aida.
• Convert patterns between crafts in one step. File → Convert Craft (or the Pattern Information dialog) turns a cross stitch chart into needlepoint or diamond painting and back. Anything the target craft can't hold is listed before you confirm, and a single Ctrl+Z restores everything.
• Each craft speaks its own language. The editor, legends, and PDFs say plies and mesh for needlepoint, drills and packs for diamond painting — down to craft-specific stitching instructions written for how each craft is actually worked.
• Craft-true materials. Wool brands (including all 430 Appleton shades) for needlepoint, drill color systems (DMC codes plus Diamond Dotz, Artdot, and Diamond Drills USA) for diamond painting, and 50+ floss brands for cross stitch.

A round of polish across the editor and PDF export.

• One menu instead of two. The editor's ☰ button duplicated the menu bar along the top, so it's retired on desktop. Everything lives in the menu bar now — including Back Home under File, feedback links under Help, and a proper Help > About.
• Backstitches stay put. After reopening a saved pattern, editing a newly drawn backstitch, knot or bead could move an older one instead — and undo sometimes removed the wrong line. Fixed. Thank you to the stitchers who wrote in about this one.
• Running page headers. Exported PDFs can show the pattern name and page number on every page, and titles, footers and margins now line up with the chart content properly. Chart tiles anchor to the top left of the page, and lists on instruction pages get room to breathe.
• Cleaner undo history. Picking the fabric colour you already had no longer adds a do-nothing step to undo.

Happy stitching!

• Diamond painting is now a craft you can pick. Choose it when you create a new pattern, or convert an existing chart from Pattern Information. Cells are drills — one color per cell, no partial stitches.
• Round or square drills. Pick the drill shape when you create the pattern and switch it any time from Pattern Information. The editor canvas renders round drills as real domed circles, and every size estimate uses true drill dimensions (2.5 mm square, 2.8 mm round). Chart pages stay a crisp working grid of squares — easy to count, easy to print.
• Drill colors, not floss. The legend counts drills and packs instead of skeins and strands, and the PDF instructions speak diamond painting: canvas adhesive, pen wax, and checking off symbols as you go.
• Photos convert to diamond painting too. Pick Diamond painting in the import panel and the preview redraws as drills straight away, sized for drill density rather than stitch count.

• Needlepoint is now a craft you can pick. Choose it when you create a new pattern, or convert an existing cross-stitch chart from Pattern Information. Tent stitches render as a single diagonal per cell in the editor, in PDF charts, and in SVG exports.
• Canvas, not fabric. Pick from eight mesh sizes (10 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 18 / 22 / 24 / 28), and the finished-size readout does the math for you. The chart legend and PDF instructions say "canvas" and "mesh" instead of "fabric" and "count".
• Photos convert to needlepoint too. Pick Needlepoint in the import panel and the preview redraws as tent stitches straight away — what you see while you tune the colors is what you get.
• Cross stitch ↔ needlepoint is non-destructive. The stitch data is the same underneath, so switching back and forth keeps your backstitch, French knots, and beads. Partial stitches that needlepoint can't work convert to tent, in one undoable step.
• A new three-step setup. Creating a pattern now walks you through project type, canvas and size, then colors — with the finished size shown before you commit to it.

A handful of export fixes, most of them from stitchers writing in. Thank you.

• Your fabric colour on the cover. Cover pages and share images were always mounted on white, even when you'd picked a different fabric for the design. They now use your fabric — or choose your own under Export settings > Cover Page > Preview fabric.
• A border around every preview. An uploaded cover image printed without the black border the other preview styles had. They match now, and the new Image Border Options let you change its thickness, padding and colour, round the corners, or crop the preview to a circle.
• Colour names print properly. Names containing "ff", "fi" or "fl" — Coffee Brown, Off White, Dark Fireside — came out mangled on the thread key, and copying them out of the PDF gave nonsense characters. Both fixed.
• Finished size, both ways. With Number format on Auto, inches and centimetres each use their own style: 7.14" and 18,1 cm.

Happy stitching!

If you've imported an .oxs, .pat or .xsd file and thought the colors looked a little off, they were: we were quietly swapping each one for the nearest thread in our library. Your file's colors and your own names for them now come through exactly as you saved them, and the thread key prints those names too. Where your file names a real thread code, we still show it, so your shopping list is unchanged.

A few other fixes in the same area:

• Partial stitches from imported files — quarter and half stitches sometimes drew as full crosses until you touched the palette. They're right from the moment the file opens.
• Replace Color — opens at the closest matching thread to the one you're replacing, centred in the list, instead of at the top of several hundred colors.
• Cover image — the Upload, Replace and Remove buttons only responded near one edge, and Remove didn't actually remove. All three work properly now.
• Cover page preview — the simple style no longer comes out cropped.
• Numbers in your PDF — a new Number format setting under Export settings > Page Settings lets you pick 1,234.56 or 1.234,56 regardless of whether you work in inches or centimetres. Leave it on Auto and nothing changes.

Happy stitching!

If you've tried tracing over a reference photo, you may have noticed it came out squashed. The overlay image was being stretched to fill your whole grid, so unless your photo happened to have exactly the same proportions as your pattern, it arrived distorted — and there was no way to nudge it back. Thank you to the stitcher who wrote in about this.

Your photo now keeps its own shape, and you can put it exactly where you want it. Pick the Overlay tool in the left toolbar, load an image, then:

• Drag it to move, drag a corner to resize. The proportions are held for you, so it can't get squashed again.
• Fit, Fill, and 1px per stitch. Under Position in the tool bar. Fit centers the whole photo in your grid, Fill covers the grid and trims the edges, and 1px per stitch lines one pixel of your photo up with one stitch — handy for pixel art. Fit also puts everything back if you've moved things around.
• Match canvas to image. If your grid is the wrong shape for your photo, this resizes the canvas to suit — 61 × 31 photo, 61 × 31 grid, one click. Your existing stitches aren't stretched, the canvas just changes shape around them.

Where you put the photo is saved with your pattern, so it's still there when you come back to it.

Happy stitching!

A few of you wrote in over the past weeks to say a pattern had gone backwards — hours of stitching charted out, and then one day it opened looking like it did days earlier. Thank you for telling us, and sorry. Losing that is horrible, and it was our fault.

The honest reason it couldn't be undone: we only ever kept one copy of each pattern. Whatever was saved last won, and there was nothing behind it to go back to.

That's changed. Stitchmate now keeps your earlier versions as you work. Open File > Version History on any pattern to see them, and restore one if something has gone wrong. Restoring makes a copy — your current pattern stays exactly where it is, so you can compare the two and keep whichever you want.

Two smaller things came with it:

• No more "which version do you want to keep?" If your computer and our servers ever disagree, we keep the newer one and tell you afterwards. It was never a fair question to ask — you couldn't see either version to choose between them, and now you don't have to.
• Old copies can't overwrite newer ones. If anything ever thinks your work is missing when it isn't, it will leave it alone instead of writing over it.

Happy stitching!

Gradients used to blend exactly two colors — your primary and secondary. Now they'll blend as many as you like. This one started as a suggestion from a StitchMate user.

Select two or more colors in your palette (Cmd/Ctrl+click to add them one at a time, or Shift+click for a whole range) and they become the gradient's stops, in the order you picked them. Drag across your pattern and it blends from the first to the last. Gradient lives in the Fill dropdown in the left toolbar.

It's especially good with a shade family — pick four or five neighboring shades light to dark, drag once, and you get shading you'd otherwise be counting out by hand.

• Adjust where each color sits: click the ramp chip in the toolbar to open the stop editor. Move any middle color earlier or later in the blend, reverse the whole ramp, or reset it to even spacing.
• Straight angles you can see: holding Shift has always snapped the gradient to neat angles, but nothing on screen showed it. The direction arrow snaps now too.
• Modifiers respond straight away: pressing Shift or Alt mid-drag updates the preview immediately instead of waiting for you to move the mouse.

There's a new handbook page for the tool as well, if you'd like the full tour.

Patterns that wouldn't stay saved. A few of you wrote in about work going missing — patterns vanishing from your library, or edits gone after coming back to the app. Thank you for telling us, and sorry it took a while.

The cause was your browser running out of room to store your pattern list. Once it was full, saving quietly stopped working while the app carried on saying everything was fine. That was the worst part of it, and it's the part we've fixed hardest: your library has moved to storage with room to spare, so it's no longer something you can run out of, and if a save ever does fail you'll now be told instead of finding out later.

A few things came along with it:

• Missing pattern previews come back on their own. If your library was showing blank cards, they'll fill themselves back in next time you open it. Nothing was lost — the pictures just weren't being found.
• Deleted patterns stay deleted. If you had two tabs open, deleting a pattern in one could bring it back from the other. It won't now.
• A heads-up when the same pattern is open twice. Editing one pattern in two tabs meant whichever tab saved last quietly won. You'll get a warning now, so you can close the other one before it costs you anything.

Happy stitching!

Open a pattern PDF in Illustrator and it used to greet you with a list of missing fonts, then quietly replace your symbols with empty boxes. Export settings > Vector Editing fixes that.

Tick Outline symbols and every symbol becomes an editable shape rather than text, so there's no font to go missing and nothing to substitute. Resize the chart, recolor it, pull it apart — the symbols stay exactly as you drew them. It costs about one percent on file size and prints identically.

For a file with no fonts in it at all, also pick Helvetica (standard) as your PDF font under Page Settings. Between the two, the document opens with no warnings whatsoever, and your titles and thread codes are still real text you can edit. One thing to know: Helvetica covers Latin characters only, so if your pattern has Cyrillic in it, stick with one of the other fonts — we'll warn you in the font picker either way.

If you'd rather keep symbols as text, Download font hands you the symbol font to install. It's built for one pattern specifically, so it won't match another pattern's chart.

Fonts embedded in your PDFs now also carry proper names instead of a different set of random numbers on every export — so if a program does ask about a font, the name it shows you is one you can actually look up.

Separately, Symbol size under Pattern Pages is now a real control. It sets how big symbols are drawn inside each square, from 50% to 120%, so you can leave more of the color showing or make a busy chart easier to read. The thread key keeps its own size, so your legend stays legible whatever you do to the chart.

Happy stitching!

Export settings > Page Settings now lets you pick the document font — six families, three sans and three serif, all covering Cyrillic as well as Latin — plus a text size for the thread key and headings. Noto Sans is the new default: the old built-in font couldn't render Cyrillic at all, so patterns with Russian or Ukrainian text quietly lost it.

Every piece of text the PDF prints is now yours to write: the cover title and its description, the instructions page, the thread key heading, the chart page and backstitch labels, the page numbering, the author and license lines. They take bold, italic, links, and {{tokens}} that fill in each pattern's own details — name, stitch count, colors, fabric, finished size, year. Nothing is fixed to English, so you can localize a whole document, and your wording saves with your export presets so you set it once. Cover text is the exception: it describes the pattern in front of you, so it stays with the pattern rather than following a preset onto the next one.

Also in this release: a batch of PDF export fixes.

You can now work a pattern in up to 6 strands instead of 4 — handy for binca and other low-count fabrics where two strands disappear into the weave. A full DMC skein is six strands, so that's the whole range covered.

Blended colors got the same lift. A blend can now mix up to 6 threads in the needle rather than 4, and you can assign which thread sits on which strand.

• See your threads sooner: in the realistic view, a blend used to show as one averaged color until you zoomed right in. The individual thread colors now come through at ordinary working zoom, so you can see how a blend really reads while you stitch.
• Tidier palette: long blend names like "DMC 3371 + 3031 + 920 + 936 + 519 + 939" no longer spill out of the palette. They're neatly shortened, and hovering shows the full list.
• Strand count in the tooltip: hover any color in the palette to see how many strands it's set to.

If you open a saved pattern that already used 5 or 6 strands, it will now load with the right count — previously those came back as 2.

Happy stitching!

If you track your stitching in Pattern Keeper, your patterns will now open in it.

Tick Export for Pattern Keeper at the top of the export settings, and that's the whole job — no options to work through. You get a two-page PDF: your chart on a single sheet, and the thread key after it. Import it into Pattern Keeper and tick off your stitches as you go.

A couple of things worth knowing. Pattern Keeper doesn't support backstitch or partial stitches, so those are left out of this export — if your pattern has any, we'll tell you exactly how many before you download, and your normal PDF still has everything. And because the whole chart goes on one sheet, a big design makes for a very large page; it's made for the screen rather than the printer, so keep using your normal export for paper.

Happy stitching!

Stitchly patterns now open in Stitchmate. If you design on an iPad in Stitchly, you can bring those patterns over — drop a .stitchly file straight onto the editor, or pick Import pattern > Stitchly (.stitchly). Everything comes across: half, quarter and three-quarter stitches, backstitch, French knots, beads, and your real DMC colors. There's also a Stitchly file opener if you just want to look at a pattern, print it, or send it to PDF without opening the editor — handy when your iPad isn't to hand.

Printable graph paper, at your fabric count. The new graph paper generator makes blank counted grids for charting by hand — pick your count (or a fabric preset, which sorts out the over-2 math for evenweave and linen), choose A4, Letter, Legal, A3 or Tabloid, and download. Every sheet prints a 1-inch and 1-cm ruler along the top so you can check with a real ruler that your printer hasn't quietly shrunk it — the single most common way hand-charting goes wrong. Squares per inch or per 10 cm, center crosshair, hoop guide, and PDF, PNG or SVG.

Backstitch gets its own pages. Your chart now comes through clean, with the backstitch on a second set of pages after it — so you can work the crosses from a grid where nothing covers the symbols, then go back and add the outlines. Only pages that actually have backstitch are included, so a six-page chart usually adds one or two, not six. On by default; there's a switch under Pattern Pages if you'd rather have it all on one chart. Thanks to the stitcher who wrote in asking for this.

Two new options in the thread key (Export settings > Thread Key), both saved with your presets:

• Show color names: your key now lists each color's name beside its code, so you can see "Very Dark Garnet" instead of matching up "DMC 814" in your head. On by default. Names that just repeat the code are left out. With thread usage on as well, the key uses one wider column per page so the names have room.
• Show stitch count per color: adds a column showing how many stitches use each color. Off by default — handy for working out what to tackle first.

Also fixed:

• Black & white exports are properly black and white. The thread key was printing colored swatches and symbols, and backstitch lines were told apart by color — which on a mono printer means not at all. Backstitch now uses solid, dashed and dotted lines, and the key matches the chart.
• The same color at two strand counts is now two entries. If you backstitch DMC 152 in both 2 and 4 strands, they get their own line styles and their own rows in the key, instead of being merged into one.
• Every chart page tells you where it is. The top-left now reads "Pattern page 4/12 (2B)" instead of repeating the pattern name, and the minimap has column numbers and row letters to match — so a page spread out on the table is easy to place.
• Presets no longer say "(modified)" the moment you load them.
• The preview stays where you left it when you change a setting, instead of jumping back to page 1, and the Custom tile size option opens its sliders as it always should have.

Happy stitching!

Sorry to anyone who hit this one. On Macs, iPhones and iPads, a pattern purchase could go through — payment taken, receipt sent — but the download stayed locked until you closed the checkout window. Not fun when you've just paid.

It's fixed. Your purchase now unlocks on its own within a couple of seconds of payment, no matter which device or browser you're using. If you were ever charged without getting your pattern, it's waiting for you now — and you can always reach us and we'll sort it straight away.

Happy stitching!

Ever signed in on your phone or a second computer and found some of your patterns showing a blank tile instead of the little preview picture? That's fixed. Previews now travel with your patterns to every device you're signed in on.

We also went back and restored the previews for patterns that were already showing blank, so your library should look complete again. Nothing was ever lost — it was only the thumbnail that went missing, never the pattern itself.

Happy stitching!

A couple of fixes that had been quietly biting some of you:

• Purchases made before signing in: if you bought a pattern as a guest and later created an account, the purchase didn't always follow you into it. It does now, and we went back and reconnected the ones that had been left behind. If this was you, your pattern is waiting in your library.
• Light and white backstitches: on some imported patterns, pale backstitch lines (especially white) were showing up black and disappearing against dark fabric. They now render in their true color.

Happy stitching!

Got a pattern saved from a recent version of PCStitch? It'll open now. We added support for the latest PCStitch .PAT format (the newer "B" files), so your chart, colors, and backstitches come through when you import — no more "unsupported file" surprises.

Import it the usual way from the top-left menu > Open, or just drag the file in.

Happy stitching!

Give your photos a whole new look when you turn them into patterns. In the import wizard's Colors step, pick a Color style to recolor your image into a curated palette — Black & White, Sepia, duotones, tritones, soft tracing palettes, and more (23 styles in all).

• Quick strip: tap a popular style to apply it instantly and watch the preview update live.
• Browse all styles: open the full gallery right in the panel (no pop-up covering your pattern) and click through styles to compare.
• Custom palette: build your own from scratch when you want an exact set of colors.

Happy stitching!

Tried to turn a photo straight from your iPhone into a pattern and watched it get stuck on "Preparing your workspace"? Those are HEIC photos — the format Apple devices save by default — and outside Safari they'd quietly refuse to load.

Now they just work. Drop in a HEIC or HEIF photo anywhere you'd normally add an image and we'll convert it for you automatically, on any browser. No more exporting to JPEG first.

Happy stitching!

• Classic Colorworks (cotton): Re-sampled every color directly from the official classiccolorworks.com thread photos. The catalog grew from 80 to 274 colors so every shade in the current cotton range is matched and convertible.
• Classic Colorworks Silk: Brand-new catalog with all 128 silk colors. Available in the Editor, conversion tools, and color charts alongside the cotton range.

• Collections: Group your saved patterns into folders — Christmas, Gifts, WIP, whatever you like. A new pill bar above "Your Patterns" lets you to see patterns in one collection at a time, and "All" shows everything as before.
• Move patterns in one click: Right-click any pattern and pick "Move to…" to drop it into a collection (or pull it back out). Multi-select a bunch of patterns and bulk-move them in one shot.

• Auto mode for petite stitches: Pick the petite (1/4) or petite half (1/4 half) Auto stitch type and let the editor automatically figure out which corner of the square you meant — it picks the corner closest to where you click. No more swapping between four corner variants while you place petite stitches.
• Fixed bugs with multiple petite stitches per square not showing.

• Colorways: Curate multiple "looks" for the same pattern — pair a color mapping with a symbol mapping, give it a name, and switch between them in one click. Great for comparing a DMC Original against an Anchor Alt, or experimenting with a moody alt palette without losing your original. Duplicate, rename, and delete from the new dropdown at the top of the palette panel (also in the Palette menu up top).
• Custom hex colors: Tweak any color in your palette to a custom hex value. Edits stay isolated to the current colorway, so your other variations keep their original colors.
• Save and load palettes: Export your pattern's palette to a file and load it back into any project. Handy for reusing a curated color set across patterns, or sharing with friends.

Happy stitching!

• Bigger pattern size limit: Patterns can now be up to 2000 × 2000 stitches, double the previous 1000 × 1000 cap. Plenty of room for ambitious large-scale projects.
• Adjust colors on a selection: Tweak hue, brightness, and contrast for just the selected area instead of the whole pattern — perfect for fine-tuning specific regions.
• Crop pattern to selection: Make a selection and instantly trim the pattern down to it. Great for extracting a piece of a larger design.
• Smoother resize window: The Resize Pattern dialog got a polish pass to make it easier and more intuitive to use.
• PDF export presets: Pick from ready-made export setups (A4 or US Letter, black & white or full color, 30 or 50 cells per page) from a new dropdown at the top of the export settings panel. Save your own tweaks as custom presets too.
• New tile size controls: The "Tile Size" section in PDF export now lets you choose between cells per page (with 20/30/40/custom options) or a precise physical cell size in mm or inches — whichever is easier to think about. The page overlap math also got fixed so you actually get the number of cells you asked for on each page.
• A3 page size for PDF export: A3 is now available alongside A4 and US Letter in the Page Size picker — great for larger home/office printers and copy shops, and it cuts your page count roughly in half for big patterns.

Happy stitching!

The new overview panel (aka minimap) lives in the bottom-left corner to help you find your way around the pattern – especially useful when working on zoomed-in details. You can toggle it on or off in the top-left menu > view.

Plus, you can now choose to view your pattern palette as a grid instead of a list. This setting lives in the bottom-right cog icon menu.

The text tool just got much more powerful & fun!

Use text effects (outline, shadows, curved multiline text, and more!) plus 20+ new beautiful fonts. You can also bring your own fonts! This feature only works in Chrome & Edge browsers: at the bottom of the font library panel, there's a button to allow access to all fonts installed on your device.

Plus the editor performance is improved across the board and a bug with Firefox auto-downloading PDFs is now fixed.

Happy stitching!

The text tool now creates editable text objects that you can select, move, and change properties of after placing them. Adjust font, size, color, letter spacing, and line spacing at any time.

Stitchmate can now open many more of your .PAT PCStitch patterns.

You can now download realistic mock images from the Editor – your pattern stitched & framed or in a hoop. Where to find: Top-left menu > Export > Mockup image. Users with Pro passes get watermark-free mock exports.

Added support for SVG chart exports. Stitches, backstitches, grid, symbols and legend are all on separate SVG layers to enable professional workflows.

• Triangle and diamond shapes: The Shape tool now includes triangle and diamond shapes alongside rectangles and ellipses. Draw them filled or as outlines.
• Copy and paste between browser tabs: Copy a selection in one pattern and paste it into a different pattern in another browser tab. Any new colors are automatically added to the destination palette.

• 6 new color chart pages: Browsable color charts added for Classic Colorworks, CXC, Gentle Art, J&P Coats, Kreinik, Presencia, Sullivans, and Weeks Dye Works — with search, filtering, and detail views.
• Thread usage calculator: A new free tool estimates how many skeins you need based on pattern size, stitch count, fabric type, and strand count. Supports DMC and other popular brands.

A new free tool extracts the dominant colors from any photo and matches them to real thread colors. Upload an image, get a curated palette of DMC (or other brand) threads, and jump straight into the editor with those colors.

• French knots: Add French knots to your patterns, fully supported in the editor, PDF export, and file imports. The realistic renderer shows them with proper 3D lighting.
• 50+ thread brands: The thread library expanded from 7 to over 50 brands covering 7,000+ colors — hand-dyed, silks, metallics, and more are now available for color matching and palette building.
• Thread color database fixes: Corrected colors for 7 brands (channel swap bug), added missing DMC and Anchor entries, cleaned up duplicates, and normalized Madeira codes.

PDF export now offers a "No Symbols" pattern style that shows colored blocks without symbol overlays, producing cleaner charts for color-printed patterns.

• Realistic rendering is now the default: New patterns open in the realistic view with textured thread, natural shadows, and highlights. Thumbnails use this mode too.
• Free tier expanded to 10 patterns: Free accounts can now save up to 10 patterns, up from 5.

You can now open patterns saved in Pattern Maker (.xsd) format. Full stitches, partial stitches, backstitches, blended colors, and thread palettes are all imported.

Patterns now support blended colors made from 2–4 thread colors stitched together. The realistic view shows each strand in its own color with natural twisting. Create blends from your palette via right-click, and blend info carries through to PDF export.

When importing a photo, the wizard now shows realistic mockup previews of your pattern in embroidery hoops and frames. Switch between styles to see how your finished piece will look before committing.

You can now show center lines on your pattern grid, making it easier to find the middle of your design and count stitches from the center outward — just like working from a printed chart.

• Audio feedback: The editor now plays subtle sound effects for tool switches, brush strokes, and keyboard shortcuts. Adjustable volume, or turn it off in Settings.
• Free example patterns: A collection of free example patterns you can open, edit, and use as starting points for your own designs.
• Handbook: New in-app help pages with detailed guides for each tool, including keyboard shortcuts and tips.

PDF export now opens in a modal overlay instead of switching to a separate mode, so you stay in context with your pattern. On mobile there's now a full-width Download button at the bottom of the screen.

You can now share your cross-stitch patterns with a link. The share modal generates a preview image and lets you post directly to Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, and more. Anyone with the link can view your pattern.

You can now add personal notes to any color in your palette (e.g., "use 2 strands" or "substitute with X"). These comments appear in the PDF export legend.

The editor on phones received a major overhaul: redesigned bottom sheets for colors, tools, and settings; faster animations; better pinch-to-zoom and panning; proper iPhone safe area support; and fixes for iOS Safari scrolling and gesture issues.

You can now copy, cut, and paste backstitch lines using standard keyboard shortcuts (Cmd/Ctrl+C, X, V), making it much faster to duplicate or move backstitch work.

A new preprocessing step lets you crop, rotate, and flip your image right after selecting it, before any conversion happens. No need to edit your image in another app first.

When importing an image, you can now choose "Pixel Art" mode for pixel art images. This maps each pixel directly to a stitch with exact colors preserved. The app auto-detects pixel art (including upscaled images) and recommends the right mode automatically.

New online tools let you convert thread codes between DMC, Anchor, Sullivans, and Madeira brands, with match quality indicators. Browsable color chart pages were added for Anchor (444 colors), Cosmo (501 colors), Sullivans (454 colors), and Madeira (366 colors).

You can now switch between light, dark, and auto (system) themes directly from the app menu.

• FLOW Score: A new quality score rates your pattern's stitchability based on fragmentation, color locality, palette efficiency, and workability. A floating indicator shows your score at a glance, and an issues panel highlights areas to improve.
• Confetti Cleanup: Finds and removes isolated single stitches that are hard to stitch, with a preview before applying.
• Merge Colors: Combine similar thread colors to simplify your palette, also with a preview.

• User accounts and cloud storage: Create an account using email or Google sign-in. Your patterns are automatically saved to the cloud so you can access them from any device. Existing patterns saved locally are migrated when you sign up.
• PDF export overhaul: Exported PDFs now include a thread lengths summary, stitching instructions, overlap shading between chart tiles, and PatternKeeper compatibility. Backstitch lines render with 10 distinct stroke styles. The legend shows skeins needed, and you can upload a custom cover image.

The Fill tool now supports dithering, which blends two colors in a checkerboard pattern for smoother transitions.

A new Hand tool (shortcut: H) lets you pan the canvas by clicking and dragging. A new View Settings panel gives you quick access to grid settings, fabric color, stitch display mode, and visibility toggles.

A new DMC Color Chart page lets you browse all 489 DMC thread colors in grid or list view, search by code or name, sort by hue, track your inventory, and pick colors to start a new pattern.

The Brush tool now supports a pixel-perfect drawing mode that automatically removes jagged corners from your strokes, producing cleaner diagonal lines and curves. Works with all symmetry modes.

• Confetti reduction: A new spatial coherence step reduces isolated single stitches of random colors scattered across the pattern, making converted photos cleaner and easier to stitch.
• Smart palette optimization: Image import now automatically analyzes your photo, recommends optimal settings, and improves how image colors are matched to real thread colors for more accurate results.

When converting a photo to a cross-stitch pattern, you can now apply ordered dithering to blend colors with dot patterns for smoother gradients. New cleanup presets (None, Light, Medium, Strong) let you quickly choose how aggressively to smooth the converted pattern. Advanced users can still fine-tune individual parameters.