Patternly is a free, browser-based pattern studio built by stitchers, for stitchers. Design stitch by stitch with layers and selections, convert any photo, match colours across five thread brands, and track your stitching on real kit charts — all in one place.
Draw stitch by stitch on a customisable grid. Full, half, quarter, petite, backstitch, French knots — every technique you know, right here. Layers, a full selection tool, shape stamps, text effects, symmetry modes, and unlimited undo.
Turn any photo into a stitchable pattern in seconds. Upload an image, choose your thread brand and colour count, and Patternly generates a clean, stitch-ready chart matched to Luca-S, DMC, Anchor, Cosmo or Madeira threads.
Upload the chart and legend from any kit PDF and stitch straight off your screen. Tap to mark stitches done, highlight one colour at a time, and watch your progress climb — with thread amounts calculated for you.
No sign-up. No install. Click "Open Editor" and you're in. Set your canvas size, choose your thread brand, and you're ready to create.
Draw freely with the full tool set, or upload a photo and let Patternly convert it into a clean, stitchable chart with matched thread colours.
Save your pattern, export a print-ready PDF chart with symbols and a thread key, and get stitching. Your pattern, your threads, your way.
A basic nearest-colour conversion next to Patternly's smart palette with confetti cleanup. Nothing pre-rendered — both sides are computed live on this page, right now, in your browser.
Confetti — isolated single stitches — means constant thread changes and counting fatigue. Fewer is faster.
Patternly is made by Luca-S — a cross stitch brand with decades of experience designing kits, threads, and tools that stitchers love. We built Patternly because we wanted a pattern editor that actually understands how cross stitching works, not just how pixels look on a screen.
When Luca-S puts their name on something, it means it's been made with care, tested by stitchers, and designed to last.
No sign-up. No install. Just open the editor and start creating. It's completely free.
Complete cross stitch kits, premium stranded cotton, Aida and evenweave fabrics — straight from Luca-S, the brand behind this editor.
Choose how you want to begin.
Saved in this browser on this device — 0 of 10 slots used. Your work saves by itself as you go.
Upload the legend and chart PDFs from your Luca-S kit, then mark stitches as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
Start something new — a Luca-S kit, your own uploaded chart, or a backup file.
The stitch chart pages from your kit.
Got a different format (.pat, .xsm, .xsp…)?
The colour key — symbols, thread codes and stitch counts.
Free planning tools — fabric size, stitching time, and thread quantities. No signup needed.
The "count" is how many stitches fit in one inch of fabric. A 100-stitch-wide design on 14-count fabric comes out about 7.1" wide; the same design on 18-count shrinks to about 5.6" — smaller stitches, same chart. Higher counts give finer detail but demand more precision and better lighting.
| Fabric count | Best for | Needle | Strands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aida 11 | Beginners, quick projects | 22–24 | 3 |
| Aida 14 | Most patterns — the all-rounder | 24–26 | 2 |
| Aida 16 | Slightly finer detail | 24–26 | 2 |
| Aida 18 | Detailed work, smaller finish | 26 | 1–2 |
| 28 ct evenweave (over 2) | Fine work, exposed-fabric designs | 26–28 | 2 |
| Pattern | 14-count | 16-count | 18-count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 × 50 | 3.6" × 3.6" | 3.1" × 3.1" | 2.8" × 2.8" |
| 100 × 100 | 7.1" × 7.1" | 6.3" × 6.3" | 5.6" × 5.6" |
| 150 × 150 | 10.7" × 10.7" | 9.4" × 9.4" | 8.3" × 8.3" |
| 200 × 200 | 14.3" × 14.3" | 12.5" × 12.5" | 11.1" × 11.1" |
Add 6–8 inches to each dimension for framing margins.
At least 3 inches per side — 6 inches added to each dimension in total. Go to 4 inches per side if you plan a scroll frame or a wide mat.
Yes. Evenweave and linen are usually stitched "over two" threads, so divide the fabric count by two: 28-count over two behaves like 14-count Aida. Our dropdown handles this automatically.
No. Quarter, half, and three-quarter stitches add detail inside the grid — a 100×100 pattern stays 100×100 cells regardless.
Aida has a visible grid of holes that makes counting easy. Evenweave is a finer, more uniform weave that looks like regular fabric — often chosen when unstitched fabric will show in the finished piece.
Draw stitch by stitch or convert a photo — Patternly shows the finished size live as you set your canvas.
Everything you need to design and stitch is free. Plus adds the things that help with bigger projects.
For trying things out and smaller projects.
No card needed
For stitchers with several projects on the go.
Free for 14 days, then £2.98 a month. Cancel any time.
You’ll be charged in your local currency at checkout.
Yes. The Stitch Tracker is part of Plus, and it lets you track any pattern — the paper chart from a Luca-S kit, a photo you’ve converted, or your own design — right on your screen. Every Luca-S kit comes with an access code, so once you’re on Plus you can load your kit’s chart straight into the tracker.
Your subscription simply continues — the first payment is taken automatically when the 14 days end. Nothing is charged during the trial, and you can cancel any time before it finishes if you’d rather not go on.
Yes. Cancel from your My Subscription page whenever you like. You keep Plus until the end of the period you’ve paid for.
Your saved progress stays on your account, but access to the Stitch Tracker is locked once your paid period ends. Resubscribe and everything is exactly where you left it.
A studio for designing, converting, and stitching cross-stitch — all in the browser. Jump to any part with the menu above.
Patternly has five tools that share one home. You don’t need an account to design, convert, or use the calculators — those are free. An account and Plus come in only for saving lots of patterns and for the Stitch Tracker.
Stitch off your screen instead of a paper chart, tap each stitch as you go, and never lose your place — your progress follows your account across devices.
Done stitches dim; the ones left to do stay bright.
Bought on luca-s.com? Sign in with your order email and your kits appear automatically. Have a kit from elsewhere? Scan the QR on the insert card, or type its access code once.
Tap each stitch done, work one colour at a time, and go full screen with pinch-to-zoom for a distraction-free chart.
Every stitch you mark saves to your account. Open Patternly on another device, sign in, and you’re exactly where you left off. It’s your progress that travels; reopen the pattern (log in or scan) and it snaps back into place.
A full pattern studio. Set your canvas size, pick colours from real thread brands, and draw every kind of stitch — with layers, selections, and unlimited undo.
Each tool has a keyboard shortcut. Press the letter or tap the icon in the toolbar.
Place full cross-stitches in the active colour. Click, or drag to fill a run.
Remove stitches. Drag to clear an area.
Draw outlines along the grid lines — the thin lines that define edges and detail.
Place raised dot-stitches for eyes, berries, and texture.
Flood-fill a connected area with the active colour, like a paint bucket.
Tap any stitch to make its colour active — the eyedropper.
Select a region, then drag inside it to move the stitches. Copy, cut, and paste — even across layers. Fill a selection with the active colour.
Stamp lines, rectangles, circles and other shapes instead of placing every stitch by hand.
Type words and drop them onto the chart as stitched lettering.
Move around the canvas. Always available — on a phone, pinch to zoom smoothly at the same time.
The right panel has three tabs. Thread Library is every colour a brand makes — click a swatch to add it to your working palette, the small set you’re drawing with. Click a palette swatch to make it active. Sort colours by code, name, hue, or light-to-dark, and drag them to reorder.
The Layers tab lets you build a pattern in stacked sheets — up to ten. Tap a layer to draw on it, hide one with 👁, or lock it with 🔒 so it can’t be edited by accident. The canvas shows all visible layers combined, with the topmost colour winning. Flatten merges them into one when you’re done.
Set width and height in stitches with the sliders, or type an exact size.
Add puts empty stitches on every side; Remove trims all empty edges. Both undo cleanly.
Everything undoes. Unlimited undo and redo — draw freely, you can always step back.
Turn any photo into a stitchable chart. Patternly maps every pixel to the nearest real thread colour, so what you get is ready to stitch — not just a filtered picture.
Drag an image onto the editor, or tap to upload. It’s processed on your device — never uploaded anywhere.
Choose how many stitches wide, and how many colours to reduce to. Fewer colours = simpler to stitch; more = truer to the photo.
Every colour is matched to a real thread in the brand you choose — Luca-S, DMC, Anchor, Cosmo or Madeira.
Before converting, a Style pass lets you adjust the image so the chart comes out the way you want — brightness and contrast, a hue shift, a black-and-white mix, and more. Preview updates live as you tweak.
Auto converts the whole image. Brush lets you paint over confetti — those single scattered stitches — to blend them into neighbours for a cleaner, more stitchable result.
Paint a mask to protect or isolate part of the image — keep a subject sharp while simplifying the background. A Draw/Erase toggle and adjustable brush size make it precise. Invert or clear the mask any time.
After converting, a cleanup tool finds isolated single stitches and lets you smooth them out — the difference between a chart that’s a joy to stitch and one that’s a nightmare of colour changes.
A whole hub for thread. Match any colour to real threads, pull a palette out of a photo, convert between brands, and browse every colour each brand makes.
Pick a colour or type a hex code. You get the closest thread in all five brands, each with a match-quality rating so you know how true it is.
Upload any image and Patternly pulls out its dominant shades as a ready-to-stitch thread palette. Analysed on your device, never uploaded.
Full cross-reference tables between brands — find the DMC equivalent of a Luca-S shade, and vice versa, with match quality for every colour.
Flip through every colour a brand makes, and send your picks straight into the editor’s palette.
Move patterns between formats. Bring a chart in from another program, or turn your Patternly work into a file you can open elsewhere or print.
Patternly reads and writes the common cross-stitch formats — including its own precise .Ptly format, which keeps every stitch type, colour and layer exactly. Drop a file in, choose what to convert it to, and download the result.
The practical maths of a project, done for you.
Work out the fabric size you need for a design at a given count, with margin for framing.
Estimate how much of each colour to buy, with a safety margin, rounded to whole skeins.
A realistic estimate of stitching time from your stitch count and pace. Note that backstitch, French knots and specialty stitches aren’t in the cross-stitch count, so heavy outlining will run over — budget extra for it.
Your work saves itself as you go, and exports to a print-ready chart when you’re ready.
Patterns save automatically to this browser on this device. Free accounts keep up to 10 patterns; Plus keeps 20.
Produce a print-ready chart with the symbol key — the kind you’d stitch from on paper.
Save the full editable pattern — every stitch, colour and layer — to open again or move elsewhere.
Load your Luca-S chart, tap each stitch as you go, and pick up exactly where you left off — on any device.
Your patterns are already linked to your order. Sign in with the same email you ordered with and they appear automatically — no code to type.
See how →Every kit has a QR code and an access code on the insert card. Scan it, or type the code once, and your pattern opens.
See how →In Patternly, choose Stitch Tracker from the menu, then Luca-S Patterns.
Use the same email address you placed your order with. That’s what links your purchases to your account.
Every pattern from a kit you’ve bought shows in your catalogue, ready to open. Tap one and start stitching.
Your insert card looks like this — a QR and a code.
Point your phone camera at the QR on the insert. It opens Patternly with your pattern already selected. That’s the whole step — no typing.
Prefer to type? Open Stitch Tracker → Luca-S Patterns, find your pattern, and enter the code from the card, e.g. KW5W75SQ. You only do this once — it’s remembered after that.
The tracker is a Plus feature, so if you’re not a member you’ll be asked to start your free trial first. Once you’re in, your pattern opens straight away.
Done stitches dim; the ones left to do stay bright.
Work across your fabric and tap each stitch on screen as you complete it. Tap again to undo if you miscount.
Isolate a single thread colour to see exactly what’s left of it — the way most stitchers actually work, block by block.
Tap full screen for a distraction-free chart. Pinch to zoom right into the symbols — no more squinting at a paper chart.
Stitches done, stitches to go, and a realistic estimate of the time left — updated live as you mark.
Sign in with your Luca-S account and every stitch you mark is saved to it. Open Patternly on another device, sign in, and your position is exactly as you left it. Close the app for a month — it’s still there when you come back.
Any tracked pattern can be saved to a single backup file — chart, colours, symbols and your stitched progress, all in one. Keep it safe, or move a project to another device by hand with Back up and Restore. It’s optional; your progress already syncs through your account.
Match colours to threads, convert between brands, and browse every colour chart — Luca-S, DMC, Anchor, Cosmo and Madeira.
Pick a colour or enter a hex code to find the closest thread in every brand.
Upload any image and extract the dominant shades as a ready-to-stitch thread palette.
Full cross-reference tables between thread brands, with match quality ratings for every colour.
Cross stitch kits and patterns usually name one brand's colours, but you might prefer or only have access to another. This hub finds the perceptually closest match between Luca-S, DMC and Anchor using Delta E colour distance (CIE76) in the CIELAB colour space.
Match quality is rated Excellent (ΔE under 3 — barely perceptible), Good (3–6 — noticeable but similar), Fair (6–10 — obviously different but related) or Approximate (over 10 — use with caution).
Convert PCStitch .pat, open .oxs and Stitchmate .stitchmate charts into Patternly's .Ptly format — then download them, open them in the Editor, or start stitching them in the Tracker. Got a .xsd, .chart or other format? Drop it in anyway — we'll tell you exactly how to get it converted. Everything runs in your browser; your files never leave your device.
Every converted file gets an “✏️ Editor” button — one tap opens the pattern in the editor to recolour, add layers, or export a print-ready PDF.
Or tap “🧵 Tracker” to load the chart with its full colour key into the Stitch Tracker and start marking stitches immediately.
Every stitching app has its own private format — but almost all of them can export OXS, the open interchange format Patternly reads natively. Export OXS from your program, then convert it here:
Pattern Maker (.xsd) — File → Export → OXS (or ask your designer for OXS/PDF)
WinStitch / MacStitch (.chart) — File → Export → OXS
PCStitch 7/8 (.pat) — File → Save As → PCStitch 5, or export OXS
Stitchmate (.stitchmate) — just drop it here, we convert it directly ✓
StitchFiddle, FlossCross & friends — download as OXS
Have a format we don't read and no way to export OXS? Send us a sample file — we add formats whenever they can be supported reliably.
What's .Ptly? Patternly's own pattern format — one small file your whole toolset understands: the editor, the tracker, and “Make a new pattern”.
A secure Luca-S sign-in has opened. Finish there — it brings you back automatically.
Your Luca-S account, your patterns and your stitching — in one place.
Your orders & addresses live in the Luca-S shop account ↗ · your kits and their stitch progress follow your account across devices · patterns you upload yourself save in this browser.
💡 Size, colour count and brand can all be changed after conversion too — from the editor's sidebar.
We're still finishing PDF import for kit charts. For now, you can track any pattern you make in Patternly — open it in the Pattern Editor and choose "Open in Stitch Tracker" from the download menu.
