Whether you’re a professional designer or you’re just starting out, you will definitely look to create a colour or a symbol pattern for various knitting techniques. Together with your knowledge, experience and imagination, this can be one of the best tools for designing and creating a knitting pattern for making various types of knitwear.
As always, Kukica will help you with this and present you the BEST Online Chart Makers for Knit Designers and that you can use with minimal or no cost but maximum functionality.
Although there are numerous mobile applications for creating a pattern, here we will focus on those that you can access from your computer. Since each designer has different needs, there is not only one design pattern that covers everyone’s needs. Try a couple of these and see which one suits you best.
BEST Online Chart Makers for Knit Designers
How it works: KnitPro takes a picture and turns it into a colourful pattern for crocheting, knitting and making a goblet. The program generates a PDF chart that you can use. For demonstration we created pattern shown in the photo above – KnitPro uses a photo of clothing to create a colour pattern that you can then use.
If you decide to use this program, we recommend using clear photos with sharp contrasts for best results.
Try KnitPRO
TricksyKnitter – Free
How it works: Knitting Chart Maker allows you to create your own pattern for crocheting and then share it with the community. In this way, there is a possibility for a potential user to create a particular pattern, publish it and request a help from crafters. This tool is extremely easy to use, and there is also a video guide in their website to show the pattern in the process.
Try TricksyKnitter
How it works: Chart Minder allows you to scan images and photos to create color patterns, just like the KnitPro tool listed above.
You can also create patterns using symbols.On their website they created chart of symbols using Chart Minder. Simply place the cursor on the block you want to change, and then select the stitch symbol from the palette. The pattern is supplied with symbols, so you do not need to refer to external sources to find out which symbol to use.
Try Chart Minder
STITCH FIDDLE
Cost: Free when you sign up for an account
How it works: Stitch Fiddle’s mission is to make designing easier so that designers spend less time on charts and more time knitting. That’s a mission we can all get on board with!
This chart maker has an easy-to-use interface. When you create your chart, you have the option to share it, save it and print it. Like most other color chart makers, you can also upload a photo to create a custom color chart.
Check out Stitch Fiddle here.
STITCH MASTERY
Cost: 60 British pounds (approximately $78 U.S.)
How it works: Stitch Mastery is the go-to chart maker for many professional designers and tech editors. However, it’s not free like the rest of the tools we mentioned. If you’re considering designing as a business, though, it might be worth it to invest in this software.
This software includes lots of extras that the free tools don’t, like generating written instructions from a chart. The software also gives a warning if something like a yarn over or a decrease seems to be missing from the chart. In addition, there are plenty of customization opportunities that free software doesn’t provide so that you can consistently brand your charts.
Check out Stitch Mastery here.
Stitchboard
Select the image on your computer that you want converted into a pattern. Non-members can upload .gif or .jpg images. Stitchboard Members (free!) can upload .gif, .jpg, .png, .bmp, .tif, .psd, .svg, .pcx, or .wbmp images.
Also, non-members have a 1Mb file size limit. Members have a 5Mb image file size limit.
You have a choice of colors. You can opt to have the Stitchboard system choose from a pre-defined palette of colors, or you can manually choose from a palette. If you have our system choose the best color match, you’ll need to also select the number of colors you wish. Note that if you don’t allow enough colors, the results may not be optimal.
Check out Stitchboar here
Knitting chart maker from picture
When creating your own pattern, you sometimes have a picture or design that needs to be converted into a knitting chart in order to be useful as a final pattern. The inherent problem with creating knitting patterns from pictures or other printed material, is that knit stitches are not usually square, and hence cannot use straight grid/graph paper to create the charts accurately. For most common weights of yarn, the gauge of the knit stitches is wider than they are tall. This leads to the need for a landscape-oriented rectangular graph paper to do charting on.
If you need blank graph paper to chart on, Sweaterscapes has a collection of pre-generated graph papers in various proportions to download here. If you are working with a ratio that is not pre-generated there, you can create custom grid paper for printing at Incompetech.
If your desired image is already a digital photo, the Knit Pro Web Application can take a single photo and approximate it onto square or 5:7 aspect ratio grids.
Last updated 29.11.2019.
