Difficult Symbols

[Mary T]

Hi - I purchased patterns with shapes rather than the alphabet & numbers as symbols. and some of them look like they are hand-drawn making them look difficult to read. Plus, there are perhaps 90 colors. I am used to the best ones where they use alphabets and numbers mostly. I have tried to make the pattern larger on my photocopier, except that the original pattern squishes on too much. The best pattern has like seven 10 x 10 gridded areas across and down,, These patterns are designed to squish in ten or eleven 10 x 10 gridden areas on the page.. making it very difficult to enlarge on the photocpier, unless I end up cutting the pages which turns the already 20 page pattern into 40 pieces..

so what can i do to make it easier? I dont know why pattern makers dont use the alphabet but use these awful shapes when the pattern calls for more than 50 colors!

Please help and thank you in advance.

ps.. I always work on the challenging 25 x 30 - 14 count - 90 color patterns

I have to baste a grid on my aida, i have to color in what i have done, and i cant do more than 2 sections at a time,, when the "confetti" colors come in, i get lose and fill in what looks best, though i have messed up the face doing this

[Angel]

I would imagine it's because there aren't 90 letters in the alphabet...

My best advice is to colour it up. When your not stitching, sit down and look at it closely, any that are hard to read, take a coloured pencil and colour over it, then colour over the coresponding number.

[sammy_v]

This is true Angel, but im wondering if there using symbols that look more aless like the same as when i was charting my ones i noticed some that look very alike and i would struggle with no doubt. But there are like what i would call 'bold' symbols which would be easier to use defo.

I think thats a great idea Angel, also try using a magnifiying glass to help so u aint strainning ur eyes to much looking to hard at them.

[kerbear879]

Yeah I agree..some symbols are awful. On Chessie they have < and > and they will be right next to each other in the pattern and it makes you just go cross eyed looking at them.

[Mary T]

hi - yes, even with my favorite charts that use all the alphabet, they use Capital Lettes, and then small letters, then numbers, then symbols like you find on a keyboard.. so that gives me plenty..

what are the bad kinds of symbols, they look like lumps or little hills and look like hand drawn because they are not all the same kind of lump or hill shape.

whats almost worse is one pattern i got was colored in, fine, but when you photocopy it, the dark color shows up as too dark and then its REALLY hard to see. and i'm even now looking at the original which is colored and symboled, but they use 3 similar shades of blue, and with 25 colors, that can be difficult.. I'm thinking to use it, Im going to have to guess at which color blue they really mean.

I found a really cool website to purchase patterns that would make really unique lovely cross stitch patterns however, they use that horrible symbol style.

Just so you all know, Im not a beginner, been doing cross stitching for like 20 years (Im so addicted!) and i can handle hard patterns but sometimes it would be nice that if a pattern is 330 x 225 squares, that they would make the pattern as easy to read as possible. it makes it worse if you have arthritis or your eyesight is going.

[MaggieM1750]

The last one I was working on was my santa cooking design. It was in color but even that was difficult. For the areas that were black.. the chart symbol was a black square with a white dot in the middle. For the areas that were a dark brown, the symbol was a dark brown square with a white square in the middle. And of course, the areas were right next to each other. Talk about confusing! I am glad I did most of it while in the excellent natural light of the mid-day sun.

[Mary T]

yep - thats the other pattern i got ,, it kinda hurts your eyes, to see the very dark chocolate brown with a white dot next to other very dark colors, is hard to see. I guess some folks may enjoy it. maybe if it were 10 colors it would be ok, but even this one with only 20 colors it is more difficult for me. and then you cannot color in what you have done.. which i use all the time so that i dont get lost. I'm working on a 250 x 350 pattern now.

[carolynbb]

One of my current projects has two similar symbols: an X and an hourglass looking thing which is basically an X with lines at the top and bottom. When those two are right next to each other, I want to rip my eyes out.

[andrea42]

Can I ask if it is a pattern that was snail mailed or downloaded to the cpu? I ask because I get mine downloaded right to the cpu now to make it easier to blow up a half of a page at a time that way I can see the symbols. And one thing I have learned from a friend recently and now cant do with out is I go thru and hilite one symbol throughout the entire half page in yellow so that I can find it easier and then once i have done them or as I have done them I go thru and hitlite over top with blue. It takes me a little while to hilite before I stitch with that color but it sure makes it easier to see where I am going.

[Mary T]

Hi - these patterns are downloaded (the real bad one has the ink bleeding thru and its supposed to be a circle but its really bad ) .. now i do download my preferred ABC symbols and they work out ok.

the pattern is downloaded in a PDF format, so i cannot do any adjusting to the pattern myself and i tried real hard. i tried to print it bigger and that doesn't work. or at least i dont have the computer programing skills to figure it out hehe

I think perhaps it is the smallness/squishyness that hurts. but yes i will try that method of coloring in the same symbol so at least i have that. i dont think that many squares ought to be squished on one page. but thats just me i dont mean to be crabby, i just am a bit frustrated and dont know what to do.. except now i have some excellent ideas from you all

wow, this one that i am doing that is easy to read, in between the first grid 10 x 10 area, i counted,, there are about 78 DIFFERENT colors in that one.. talk about "confetti" stitches! but when its done it will show a very nicely detailed grassy area on the finished project

[Angel]

I have no idea how technical you are or how good a quality the chart is....but if you zoom in on the PDF until you can see it properly, then hit print screen, open say msword and hit paste...you can make charts a lot bigger. Custom fit them to your own requirements.

[freelady]

I really don't know if this would work for you, but could you take the full page to a place that can photocopy and enlarge an A4 page to A3 size? You can do that at our library and it is useful at times. Then, if it were me, I'd probably divide the A3 page into half or even four and copy each part onto A4 again. This would give a better size working copy.

I haven't done this myself for xs but I have for other things and it works.

[kirstyc]

I am working on a cross stitch at the moment that has three quarter and a quarter stitches in it and when I photocopied the chart these didn't show up so well, as they a small and some are shaded diferently. So what I do is I mark the symbols off on the photocopy as I stitch them and I keep the original chart close by so that when I get confused by a symbol I refer back to the original. This seems to be helping although I have mixed a few up.

[agi]

I have just tried.... If you print pdf, I assume you are using the free Acrobat reader. There is an option in Print, Properties, then go to Effects where you can blow it up.
This prints it bigger.
Also, at Tools menu you can go to Select and Zoom, there zoom on a section, and then in Print, select Current view.

You may have to play around with these options until you find the best way, but it is possible.

(I usually use some used paper with one side empty to try out things. I often print my patterns on scrap paper, anyway.)

[Granny]

Agi--I just tried printing PDFs with changes. Worked wonderfully. Thanks for enriching my computer skills. Also, playing with those settings I found the mirror image function which I thought I had seen one day and then couldn't find again. Both the mirror image and the blow-up are essential for my next project.

I, too, print on the back of used paper for a lot of my work.

Thanks, again.

[Mary T]

Angel - hi - is that how you do the PDF? I tried everything. Maybe you know the answer to this -

even if i make the pattern larger on the photocopier, since the original takes up the whole page, then the pattern would be too big for one sheet, therefore, I have only thought about cutting up the page into 4 sections (but now i have 48 pages to a pattern rather than 12... and that got crazy one time,, i spent about 2 hours trying to put them in order and photocopying them... (coz i had to re-number the pages,, since one page turned into four, i had to write page 1A, page 2A, etc.)..

thank you for your ideas

[karen4bells]

Agi--I just tried printing PDFs with changes. Worked wonderfully. Thanks for enriching my computer skills. Also, playing with those settings I found the mirror image function which I thought I had seen one day and then couldn't find again. Both the mirror image and the blow-up are essential for my next project.

I, too, print on the back of used paper for a lot of my work.

Thanks, again.

I'll second that thank you!! It works fabulously!!! Thanks for the information. I've copied your post and save it as a word file on my computer so I will have it to refer back to!!!

[andrea42]

ok i go to my adobe and say the first page has 10x10 grid blocks marked 10, 20,30 etc all down the right page. I go to the top of the screen to tools, then hit select zoom then scroll down to snap shot tools. Then I go to the block that says 50 click and hold down and go all the way across then up and it will hilite that half of the page. then I hit print and make it fit the entire page, then I only have to do a half page at a time and its large enough for me to see all the symbols.

[Mary T]

andrea - ah! im going to try it .. i didn't know how to manipulate it before.. wow thank you!

[Angel]

I generally half them. Half them and turn the pattern on it's side, then print on the front and back of a piece of paper. You have the same numbers, the same ammount of sheets...you just read them landscape rather than portrait and on both the front and back.