Cross stitch — paint crosses on a grid

What is cross stitch here?

A grid of small cells. Every cell you paint becomes one X of thread; the cells you leave empty stay fabric. That fabric between the crosses is the look — nothing covers it.

You paint with the Pencil, one cross at a time or in strokes. StitchPencil turns the painted cells into stitches the machine can sew: the crosses of a row out and back, the same leg on top in every cross, the thread cut between areas that do not touch.

Cross stitch designs

A cross stitch is a design of its own, like a font: Gallery → New → New cross stitch…. Pick the hoop and the size of one cross; the dialog shows how many crosses fit. The gallery marks it Cross stitch, and the filter above the cards shows All, Designs, Cross stitch or Fonts.

A cross stitch design always opens in the cross stitch view — there is no other view to go back to. It opens in Sewn: the real stitches, as they will be sewn, and you paint right on them — what you paint lies flat over the thread until you lift the Pencil and becomes stitches. Pattern in the bar is the chart: grid lines, every tenth one stronger, the symbols from the View menu, and partial stitches as clear shapes. Both views paint; switch when you want to count.

1× | 2× in the bar sets how often what you paint next is sewn: 2× gives a fuller cross, 1× a lighter one. Change it while you paint to make single places stand out — a 1× cross shows in a thinner thread. Painting over a cell with the other setting changes it; a selection keeps it when moved.

Tracing a picture: bring it in through the Layers panel’s plus (Image) as usual. Under the grid the fabric turns to tracing paper — the picture shows through, the crosses stay solid — so you can paint over it cell by cell. To place it by hand, tap the picture’s row in the Layers panel: like in a design, you drag it into place and pull its handles to scale and turn it. Tap Paint or any other cross stitch tool to go back to painting. Show above the stitches in the picture’s settings puts it on top instead. Two buttons below it place the picture exactly, which a finger never quite does: Fit to grid lays it over the whole grid, centred and as large as fits — a QR code of 37 modules on a grid of 37 cells lands module on cell; Snap to cells keeps the picture’s size, rounded to whole cells, and puts its edges on the cell lines.

2.0 mm, sewn twice, is the default — that is what the test pieces settled on. 1.8 mm is finer; from 2.5 mm the crosses read as a net rather than a filled area.

Cross stitch in other designs

In any design, the plus in the Layers panel’s header offers two ways in, under Cross stitch:

From the gallery… — pick a cross stitch design. It lands as a block at the hoop centre, without the fabric: in a design it is only its stitches, beside a sashiko fill or a satin border.
New cross stitch… — paint a new one right where you are, for the rose that does not exist yet. The cross stitch view opens over the design, which stays faintly visible.

Both ask how the cross stitch comes in:

As a copy (the default) — a version of its own in this design. Changing it leaves the original in the gallery untouched.
Linked — change the original in the gallery and it changes in every design that links it. A new cross stitch made this way becomes a cross stitch design in the gallery under the name you give it.

Tap a block once to select it, again to open the cross stitch view — or Edit. Done goes back to the design. A linked block hands what you painted to its original; when a design opens, its linked blocks take the latest state of their originals and say so. Where a block lies and how it is turned stays as you placed it.

The grid’s settings say where a block came from — Linked to “Rose” or Copy of “Rose”. Unlink makes a linked block a copy of its own. Save to the gallery keeps a block as a cross stitch design of its own.

Sharing: a design file always carries its cross stitch in full — whoever opens it can sew it and edit it. Only the link to your original stays with you: on their iPad the block is a copy, and Save to the gallery makes it an original of their own.

The cross stitch view

In the cross stitch view the tool rail holds what the Pencil does:

Grid — the grid’s settings: size, top leg and cell size (see below).
Paint — the tile shows the active Stitch; tap it again, or hold it, for all Stitches — the cross stitch presets, as they are called when drawing:
- Whole cells: Cross, Fine and Pixel, each 1, 2 or 3 cells across. One grid mixes them: crosses for the area, pixel blocks for an accent, each cell sewn in the technique it was painted with.
- Other cells: Mini (four small crosses in one cell), Tall and Wide (two crosses side by side or one above the other), Upright (a + through the centre), Double (a cross with an upright cross over it) and Star (eight chords round the centre). Each fills one cell and is sewn the way Hatch sews it: on the cell’s own lines, never on an edge. Mini, Tall and Wide go in parts too: a tap sets just the small cross under the Pencil — the quarter of the cell, the left or right half, the upper or lower one — and a tap on a part already set adds the next one the way Hatch does (bottom right, bottom left, top right, top left; left then right; top then bottom) until the cell is whole; a drag paints whole cells, the eraser empties one. With the partial stitch tool a tap at a corner is a quarter, the same corner again grows it to its half leg, the next tap adds the three-quarter at the next corner clockwise, the fourth makes a full cross; a tap in the middle of a cell sets the lower leg, a second the upper one.
- Partial — drag through a cell for a half stitch; it leans the way you drag. Tap near a corner for a quarter stitch. Tap the free corner of a half stitch and it becomes a three-quarter stitch — the stitch that rounds an edge. The same quarter tapped again goes.
- Backstitch — draw, and when you lift the line is straightened and laid from hole to hole. Hole to hole — tap one hole after the other, a ring marks where the line goes on, tap the last hole again to stop. A tap on a backstitch takes it out.
- Knot — tap for a knot on a corner, the middle of an edge or the middle of a cell. Tap it again to take it out.
Erase — takes crosses out, and the backstitches and knots in the cells it passes over. Double-tap the Pencil to switch between painting and erasing.
Fill in — a tap fills every cell of one colour (or every empty one) that touches the tapped cell along an edge, in the active Stitch’s technique.
Shapes — pick a circle, rectangle, triangle, heart, star or diamond, Filled or as an outline, Rounded (with three-quarter stitches) or in steps; then drag it on the grid. It shows while you drag and takes the active Stitch’s technique.
Select — drag a rectangle over cells, or draw a loop around them. Drag the selection to move it: everything in it goes along — every thread and technique, partial stitches, backstitches and knots. The empty cells of a selection are see-through. With a selection the bar offers Copy (the next move leaves a copy behind), Sideways and Upside down (mirror), Turn (a quarter clockwise), Recolor (into the active thread) and Delete. A tap beside the selection lets go of it. What is moved or turned past the edge of the grid is gone.
Mirror — paints every stroke twice or four times, mirrored across the middle of the grid; a blue line shows it. Erasing, filling and shapes are mirrored too.

The HUD shows what the Pencil paints with: the puck is the active Stitch in the active thread’s colour. Tap it to open the ring; while it is open, a quick sideways flick on the puck turns between Stitches (your favourites — a long press on a Stitch under Paint puts it in or takes it out) and Threads (up to twelve, + for another). Drag the puck to move the HUD, ring open or closed.

Straight lines and shapes by hand: rest the Pencil at the end of a stroke, as when drawing. The stroke becomes a straight line from where it began, and the Pencil keeps moving its end until you lift it. A stroke that comes back round to its start becomes the circle, rectangle or other shape it looks like.

What you paint shows at once as the stitch it becomes — crosses in the grid’s look, partial stitches as their legs. Symbols in the View menu switches to the pattern and shows the flat chart there.

Each stroke is one step for Undo. Two fingers move and zoom as everywhere. A finger paints only when finger drawing is on in the settings.

Cross, Fine or Pixel?

The Stitch you paint with decides, cell by cell; one grid mixes them freely.

Cross — every cell a full cross. The default.
Fine — the same cross with the thread lying thinner: each leg is one stitch from corner to corner, the rows zigzag out and back, and the fabric shows through. For backgrounds and areas that should sit lighter than the figure.
Pixel — every cell a small block of straight stitches, the direction turning like a chessboard, a thin line of fabric between the blocks. For pixel art and patches.

Grid → Change… sets the number of cells across and down. The nine small squares choose what stays where it is: top left keeps the top left corner and the grid grows to the right and down; the middle grows on every side. Nothing you painted moves on the fabric. Squares outside a smaller grid are taken out.

Top leg chooses which leg lies on top in every cross — the same everywhere is what makes cross stitch look even. To change a thread’s colour, paint over it with another or use Recolor on a selection.

1× / 2× in the bar below sets how often what you paint next is sewn: once looks thin with machine thread; twice is the default. Each cell keeps its own count, and painting 2× over a 1× cell makes it fuller. Cell size changes the size of every cross at once — the painting stays. It stops where the grid would no longer fit the hoop; the line under the slider says so.

What the machine does

Along a row the machine sews two half legs per cell out, meeting at the centre, and comes back with a full leg, two half legs and a full leg per cell — six stitches a cross at 2×, every leg a full stitch plus two halves, the same leg on top everywhere. No thread ever lies on a cell edge: the crosses stand on their own, as in hand cross stitch (the way Hatch sews, stitched side by side 2026-10-13).
Inside one area of a colour, the thread only moves along the edges of its own cells — never across bare fabric.
Between areas of one colour that do not touch, the thread is cut and tied off. Where cells of a thread sewn later cover the gap, the thread passes under them instead and nothing is cut.
Backstitches and knots are sewn after every cross, once, each thread in one go and tied off finely — the hand convention: the outline lies on top. 1× / 2× applies only to the crosses.
The eraser takes out the backstitches and knots in the cells it passes over too.
Some machines do not cut very short moves. On the bernette b70 moves under about 6–8 mm stayed as a thread on the fabric. Areas that close together are best joined by a cell or two, or covered by another colour.

What a grid keeps out

Nothing converts into cross stitch: shapes traced into cells never sew well, so cross stitch is a choice made at New → Cross stitch or inserted as above. A grid itself stays together — Ungroup, Merge, Join, Contour and Repeat are not offered for it.

With a cross stitch grid in the design, the View menu (the eye beside the zoom) adds Symbols — the flat chart while you paint, a symbol per thread in every cell, from a little zoom on — and Grid, which keeps the grid lines over the stitches after Done too.

Can I stitch a QR code?

Yes — make it in the app rather than tracing a picture of one. A QR code is a square of modules, and when the app makes it, every module is a cell (or a block of 2 × 2 cells), exactly. In a cross stitch design, the Layers panel’s plus has QR code…: type a link or a text, choose 1 cell or 2 × 2 cells per module, the quiet zone (the empty border a scanner needs, four modules by standard) and the error correction (High by default — it lets the code survive a few crosses a scanner does not read as a square). The sheet shows the code, how many cells it takes and its size in the hoop; the grid grows if the code needs more cells than it has, as far as the hoop allows. Under Dark modules and Light modules you choose the thread and the Stitch of each side: by default the dark ones in the Pencil’s thread and the light ones left to the fabric, which is the usual dark-on-light; on dark fabric sew the light modules in a light thread and leave the dark ones to the fabric, or give both a thread. The quiet zone follows the light modules. The Stitch is any whole-cell Stitch — Cross, Fine, Pixel, Mini, Tall, Wide, Upright, Double or Star — and each side may have its own, the dark modules in Pixel and the light ones in Cross, say. A scanner reads brightness, not texture: keep the two colours well apart and give the dark side the denser Stitch; Star and Upright leave fabric showing and read lighter. Insert paints the code centred and clears everything under it and its quiet zone — one step for Undo.

A code from a phone’s screen has no gaps; crosses have. A solid look reads best — Pixel or Fine, sewn twice, a dark thread on light fabric — and 2 × 2 cells per module scans from further away. Stitch a sample and scan it before you count on it: the code is made offline on the iPad, nothing is sent anywhere.

Design check

The design check names Cross stitch areas close together: cuts inside one thread after which the needle moves less than 7 mm. The bernette b70 did not cut moves that short in the test pieces; the thread stayed on the fabric. Join such areas with a cross or two, or fill the gap with a thread sewn later — under it the move needs no cut.