Stardew Valley Inspired Cross Stitch: Part 1 - Design Your Own Pattern

For this project I wanted to make a portrait using my partner and I's characters from the game Stardew Valley and of course I had to include our cats. You can use these directions to assemble any image into a cross stitch pattern. Stardew Valley lends itself particularly well to cross stitch due to the game's pixel art style.

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See Part 2 for cross stitch basics.

This project uses GIMP (free to download) and FlossCross.com

Start by gathering the images you'd like to compile in your design and save them to your computer. I took screenshots of my characters in game using the windows snipping tool.

1. Once you have GIMP open, click the File tab and select "New", I set mine to be letter paper sized. This will function as our canvas to assemble all the separate pieces.
2. Then open each image file you will be using to compile your design
3. click the File tab again, select "Open" and choose the image file from where it's saved on your computer.

1. Select the Paths tool from the left side of screen,
2. Adjust the zoom by using the drop down menu at the bottom of the screen as necessary
3. Click at different points around the character to draw an outline
4. Once you get all the way around, press CTRL + Click the first dot to close the loop
5. On the left side of the screen, click "Selection from Path"
6. Right click on the image layer on the right side of the screen and select "Add Alpha Channel"
7. Right click on the image layer again and select "Add Layer Mask"
8. Choose "selection" from the menu that opens
9. Click the "Select" tab at the top of the screen and click "None"

At the top of the screen, you'll see a tray with thumbnails of all the files you have open in GIMP, the first one should be a blank white rectangle followed by each image you opened.

1. Click on the image layer of the file you just used the paths tool on, and drag and drop it up to the blank project thumbnail in the tray
2. Use the scale tool by selecting it from the left side or using the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+S
3. Click and drag the corner of the image to adjust scale
4. pro-tip SHIFT+ click when resizing to keep the original proportions of the image
5. Use the move tool in the tool box on the left side or the keyboard shortcut "m" and click and drag the image you want to move in order to reposition it on the canvas

Repeat Steps 2-4 for each element you want to add to the design

1. Once your are satisfied with the design click the "File" tab at the top of the screen and select "Export As"
2. Make sure to save the file as an image using .png or .jpeg
3. rename the file and choose where to save it on your computer
4. click "Export"
5. In the second box that opens, leave the default settings and click "export" again

1. Go to FlossCross.com, click "Create Pattern", no account or login needed
2. Click "From Image" under slot 1 and select your image that you created in GIMP
3. Adjust the crop of the image if you want to, I tried to center the figures and make it more square than rectangle, click continue
4. adjust the number of stitches in your project

To calculate:

1. I'm using 14 count Aida cloth, which means there are roughly 14 cross stitches per sq inch of fabric, I will be using an 8 inch hoop
2. 8x14 = 112
3. Since there's so much blank space around my project, I'm not worried if the count in floss cross is a few stitches off, I just want to get it closer to that 112 number by adjusting the slider

Click continue

1. It will default to using 30 colors for the pattern, that's a lot
2. Change it 15 colors by either typing in the box or using the slider at the top of the screen
3. click continue
4. You can narrow down the number of colors even more if you want to, click continue again

At this point we can edit the design. Some of the pixels may not have transferred correctly or may have gotten lost altogether. I recommend looking back and forth between your GIMP image and the editor to make final edits.

1. To edit, choose a color from the palette on the left side
2. select the Paint tool
3. Click the pixels you would like change
4. Use the select tool to draw a box around a group of pixels that you would like to move to make the image more centered

The pattern automatically filled all the white space with cross stitches, when you move things around with the select tool you'll end up with blank spots. Feel free to either fill them back in with the paint tool or remove all the background stitches with erase tool.

1. When you're ready, click the hamburger menu (three lines) at the top left corner and select "Export" and then "to PDF"
2. Toggle the preview on to see what the pattern will look like
3. change the name and description as you want to
4. Under Pattern Set Up you can tell it to arrange the color by number of stitches instead of by floss code if you want
5. Click Save to PDF and save it to your computer.

You Did It! Now you're ready to start stitching.