Threadhood: A Free Cross Stitch App That Keeps Charts

Most free chart makers have the same problem. They turn your photo into a pattern, then forget it. Close the tab and it's gone. And a cross stitch project doesn't take an evening. It takes weeks.

So we built Threadhood, a free cross stitch app that makes the chart and then keeps it: your charts, your thread and how far you've got.

It's live today. Below is what it does, what it doesn't do yet, and one piece of research we did while building it: how many DMC colors have no real Anchor twin.

What the Threadhood cross stitch app does

The short version: photo in, chart out, in a few seconds, on your phone.

1. Choose a photo. The chart is made on your own device. Your photo isn't uploaded anywhere.
2. Adjust it. Set the width, the number of colors and DMC or Anchor thread. Swap any thread you don't like, or leave a background as bare fabric.
3. Get a real chart. A symbol for every thread, a bold grid line every 10 stitches, numbered edges, center marks and skein counts for your fabric.
4. Keep it. Download it, share a link, or save it to your account.

Here's the chart it makes from Hokusai's Great Wave, the example on our homepage, at the default settings:

Table 1. The homepage demo chart. Hokusai's print is in The Met's collection (JP1847) and in the public domain.

An average color error of 3.7 means most stitches sit a shade away from the print, close but not identical. That's typical for a woodblock print with flat areas of color. Busy photos land higher. Width, color count and cropping all move that number.

Free and Studio: what each plan includes

Table 2. Plans as of 22 October 2026. Full details on the pricing page.

The free plan isn't a trial. You can make as many charts as you like, forever. Studio is for people who want the app to carry a project from start to finish. Paid features are checked on our server, so what you see is what you get. See pricing for the details.

Why a phone-first cross stitch app?

Because that's where stitching happens. On the sofa, on the train, in a waiting room. A desktop program doesn't come with you, and an editor built for a mouse is hard work on a small screen.

Threadhood installs to your home screen from the browser, like an app, with nothing to download from a store. On Studio, you tap or drag across stitches to mark them done, and each thread shows its percentage. If your signal drops, the marks queue up and save when you're back online.

Can I convert DMC to Anchor without losing the color?

This is the part we didn't expect.

A cross stitch app that offers two thread brands needs to know how they line up. So we measured every one of the 489 DMC colors against all 445 Anchor colors, using CIEDE2000, the color difference formula from the CIE. We checked our implementation against the 34 test pairs published by Sharma, Wu and Dalal. Then we did the same from Anchor to DMC.

Table 3. Every thread in each brand against its nearest match in the other. Colors from KXStitch's published DMC and Anchor tables (GPL-2.0-or-later). Run 22 October 2026.

Only 59 DMC colors (12%) have an Anchor match you'd struggle to tell apart side by side. Most are "a shade apart". And nearly one in five has no close match at all.

The worst gaps were bright, saturated colors:

• DMC 3846 Turquoise Bright Light: nearest is Anchor 1092 Turquoise Light, ΔE 10.2.
• DMC 3845 Turquoise Bright Medium: nearest is Anchor 186 Sea Green Medium Light, ΔE 9.4.
• DMC 996 Electric Blue Medium: nearest is Anchor 433 Ice Blue, ΔE 8.9.
• Anchor 127 Indigo: nearest is DMC 939 Navy Blue Very Dark, ΔE 10.6.
• Anchor 906 Brass Dark: nearest is DMC 433 Brown Medium, ΔE 9.0.

These numbers come from published RGB values, not a spectrometer, and real floss shifts under different light. The CIE makes the same point about its own formula:

"Reference conditions define material and viewing environment characteristics to which the colour-difference model applies."

CIE 142:2001, Improvement to Industrial Colour-Difference Evaluation

So treat the table as a guide, and hold skeins together in daylight when a color matters.

The practical lesson: chart in the brand you'll stitch with. Threadhood lets you pick DMC or Anchor before it builds the chart, so every color is chosen from the right range. Our DMC to Anchor and Anchor to DMC charts list every pairing with its ΔE.

What it doesn't do yet

Straight answers:

• No backstitch, half stitches or fractional stitches. Charts are full crosses.
• No native app store download. It installs from the browser instead.
• No other thread brands beyond DMC and Anchor for now.

If one of these is a deal-breaker, our comparison of six pattern makers covers tools that do some of it, including desktop software.

Common questions from stitchers trying a new cross stitch app

• "Do I have to sign up?" Not to make a chart. You only make an account when you want to save one.
• "Will my family photos end up online?" No. They're processed on your device.
• "What if I already have a stash?" On Studio, add the threads you own and the shopping list takes them off what you need to buy.
• "Can I print it?" Download the chart image on any plan. Studio adds a PDF kit with a cover, a key with a checklist and numbered chart pages.

Try the cross stitch app

Open the Threadhood pattern maker, choose a photo and see your chart in seconds. No account and no card. If you want to plan a whole project around it, start with our kit list for making your own pattern.