Frequently asked questions

Heddle is a browser-based tool for designing cross-stitch patterns and samplers. You can use our growing library of ready made motifs, borders, and alphabets. Or you can create your own designs. Once you are happy with your pattern, you can export the design with a floss list.

No you don't but you do if you want to save designs or motifs or some other functionality.

No. Heddle is designed to let you create a pattern and we'll handle the chart and floss list.

Heddle is a web app and is built for a desktop or laptop browser first. I will be looking at getting it to work on mobile in the next few months.

Motifs, borders, and alphabets from our library. You can also draw your own designs, save your own motifs and upload your own images.

Currently you can create a canvas up to 400 x 400 stitches. If you want something bigger please reach out to me.

DMC. The floss list at the bottom of the canvas shows each colour and its stitch count, and updates as you change the design, so you are never surprised by the total at the end.

Yes. Half stitches, beads, French knots, and backstitch are all supported, on top of full cross stitch. Some library motifs and borders already use them, and you can place any of the four yourself with the canvas stitch tools, in whatever colors are in your palette. If there are other types of stitches you want to use, please reach out to me and I will see if I can add them.

Yes. Upload a photo and Heddle converts it into a cross-stitch pattern, which becomes another element you can place on the canvas.

A PDF containing your chart with symbols, a symbol and color key, and a floss list with quantities. The export is generated in your browser.

With an account, projects are automatically saved to the cloud as you edit. As a guest, your draft is stored in your own browser only, so clearing site data or switching browsers will lose it.

The library is very early. The starter set is small and growing, and I would rather say that plainly than pad the number. I am actively looking into ethical ways to increase the size including using public domain designs. If you are interested in contributing designs, please reach out.

No motifs or artwork is AI-generated. That's really important to me and is the reason why we still have a small library in this alpha. Our motifs have mostly been hand drawn by myself but I am exploring adding public domain designs. I have used AI tools as part of building and maintaining the site itself, for example helping debug code or troubleshoot errors. During this alpha, a small amount of the website's own text copy was drafted with AI assistance as a starting point and is being rewritten by hand, e.g. some placeholder blogs. I'm flagging this because I want to be as transparent as possible. I'm actively reworking the site at the moment and have prioritised getting the UI working. Now I'm going back and rewriting the remaining copy.