Knitting chart maker: turn a picture into a colorwork chart

Why knitting charts are not square

A knit stitch is wider than it is tall. In stockinette, a typical worsted gauge is 18 stitches and 24 rows to 4 inches, so each stitch is about a third wider than it is high. If you knit a picture from a grid of square cells, it comes out squashed.

This maker fixes that: choose your yarn weight and it uses more rows than columns, so the finished piece has the same proportions as your picture. The chart cells are drawn the same shape as your stitches. For an exact result, knit a swatch, count your stitches and rows over 4 inches, and pick the closest gauge.

How to read the chart

• Each cell is one stitch, and each row of cells is one row of knitting.
• Knitting charts are read from the bottom up. On right-side rows, read from right to left; on wrong-side rows (when knitting flat), read from left to right.
• In the round, every row is a right-side row, so read every row from right to left.
• Thick lines every 10 stitches and 10 rows make it easier to keep your place.

Stranded or intarsia?

Stranded (Fair Isle) knitting carries two colors along each row and works best with small repeating motifs and no more than two colors per row. Intarsia uses a separate strand for each block of color and suits pictures with large areas of color. For photos, keep the colors low (4 to 8) and turn on "Remove stray single stitches" so you do not change color for a single stitch.

Tips for a good chart

• Pictures with a clear subject and a plain background work best. Turn on "Leave the background empty" to knit the background in your main color.
• A sweater front is usually 80 to 110 stitches wide; a hat motif 30 to 60; a pillow 60 to 100.
• Check the finished size under the chart before you buy yarn. The PDF lists the stitch count for each color to help you estimate amounts.

Questions