PDF Export

When it is time to actually stitch, most people want paper — or at least a proper chart on a tablet. PDF export produces the kind of chart you would expect from a bought pattern: a cover with the full preview, the chart itself, and a floss legend, printed in the language you stitch in.

Chart styles

Under Print Mode in the Pattern Pages section, choose how the chart is drawn. The three modes match the editor’s view modes:

• Color only — filled color blocks. Beautiful, and great for color-printing small patterns.
• Color + Symbol — color blocks with symbols on top. The most readable on screen and in color print.
• Symbol only — black-and-white symbols only. The classic, ink-friendly choice, and the most reliable for telling similar shades apart while stitching.

The Symbol size slider makes the symbols smaller or larger, from 60 to 150%.

What the export includes

Multi-page charts. Big patterns split cleanly across pages with row and column numbers along the edges of every page. Each page repeats two rows or columns from the page before it, shaded gray, so you can line the pages up. Every page is labeled, for example “Chart page 3/8 (B2)”: rows of pages are lettered from the top and columns numbered from the left, and a small map in the corner shows where the page sits. An overview page before the chart shows the whole pattern with every page outlined and labeled the same way. No guessing where page 3 joins page 4.

A floss legend. Each color with its symbol, code, and name in your selected thread brand — DMC, Anchor, Sullivans, J&P Coats, or Maxi — with its stitch count and the skeins to buy. For cross stitch, the legend also prints how many strands you stitch with and a total row. Skeins are estimated from the fabric count, your strands and 8 m skeins, with 15% extra, and rounded up per color. Set your strands in Canvas Settings (Pattern menu) on the Fabric tab; unless you change them, the estimate assumes 2 strands for cross stitch and 1 for backstitch. Take the legend to the store as your shopping list.

Backstitch. Your backstitch lines are drawn over the chart on every page they touch and listed in the legend with their floss codes. In Symbol only, each backstitch color gets its own line style (solid, dashed, dotted and more), and the legend shows the same style, so two dark lines stay apart on a black-and-white printout. For a busy chart, turn on Backstitch on separate pages: the chart pages print clean, followed by a backstitch page for each page a line reaches, with the stitches faded underneath.

A title page with the pattern preview, dimensions, and the details you set — title, designer, and fabric count, so the finished size is printed right on the pattern.

A QR code for the tracker. When the pattern is saved to your account, the cover carries a “Track your progress” QR code. Scan it with your phone and the pattern opens straight in the progress tracker, so you can mark stitches while you work from paper. It is on by default; switch off Add a QR code for tracking your progress on your phone under Cover Page if you don’t want it.

Print in your language

Under Page Setup, PDF language sets the language of every word the PDF prints: the cover, the legend, the page headers, the overview and the footer. Choose English, Swedish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Danish or Finnish. It starts at the language the app is in, so you can still print a Spanish chart from an English screen. Thread names stay as the brand prints them, and numbers follow the language (18,1 cm in German).

Counting aids

Under Grid & Guides, Bold every 10th line and Show center lines are on by default; the red center lines mark the middle of the pattern, the usual place to start. Turn on Medium line every 5th for an extra, lighter line between the bold tens.

Under Pattern Pages, Number every sets how often row and column numbers print: Auto, or every 1, 5 or 10. Numbers sit on 5, 10, 15 and so on, never on 1, 6, 11. Auto numbers every line on a small chart and every 5th or 10th on larger ones, depending on how much room the numbers have.

Your choices are remembered on this device, so you set black-and-white A4 landscape once. Reset to defaults takes you back. The pattern’s own title, designer, notes and fabric count are never carried over to the next pattern.

Knitting charts

Knitting charts export from the same screen. The Yarn Key letters each yarn A, B, C, and a stitch legend lists every stitch symbol with its abbreviation and name in the PDF’s language. Stitches are numbered from the right edge and rows from the bottom (from the top for a piece knitted top down), the way you knit them. Written row-by-row instructions, on by default, adds the chart in words after the chart pages. Squares with no stitch print gray; turn on Leave out no-stitch squares at the edges under Grid & Guides and the chart prints in the shape of the piece.

Before you export

Two minutes of preparation makes a better chart: run confetti cleanup so the legend isn’t padded with two-stitch colors, double-check your fabric count so the size on the cover matches your plans, and check your strands so the skein estimate matches how you stitch.