Creating a intarsia Pattern

[Gemma417]

Hi,

I'm having a go at designing my own intarsia pattern but i'm struggling with how to put the pattern onto paper. 

Its going to be 8 x 10 inches.  so i've worked out i would need 34 x 42 stitches. But i don't know how to make the chart that size.

I've been trying to use stitch fiddle but if i choose the size i want the image goes all wrong. 

Can anyone give me any help?

Thank you.

Gemma.

[Granny Square]

Do you have some sort of imaging software on your computer?--even Paint would work.  You can make your image zoom in or out on graphing programs by adding or subtracting the white space around it.  Example, you could put your image in the middle of a "greater than 34x42" grid, and just use the middle 34 x 42 grids of the resulting graph. 

In Paint, you can select the image and then 'resize' to make it smaller within the canvas.  Be sure to click 'maintain the aspect ratio'.  

 

 

[Gemma417]

Thank you for the reply i've been trying to work it out for days but i just cant get my head around it.

I have paint on my computer and i understand how to make the image smaller and bigger. but when i put it onto stitch fiddle how do i make it so the image is just in 34 x 42 squares? or is their a better place to make the chart. 

[Granny Square]

I really doubt if you can get it exactly in 34 x 42, but I'd think you could get it 'close' with a couple of empty edge squares top and bottom.  

I'm going to try an experiment and get back to you...  

---OK, I give up.  I got it to work once and was posting it here and realized I'd erred on the stitch count, but the graph came out OK on Stitchfiddle.  I realized the count error as I was posting it, made a corrected original to feed thru Stitchfiddle, and it didn't work well at all.(!!?)  I have to admit, I've only created my own graphs for filet, and use Excel, so haven't used Stitchfiddle or Microrevolt for a project.

A low tech way to do this, which is slow but you've already spent days on this, is to print your image and draw grids around it.  I'd use a metric ruler, since it's easier to work with millimeters than inch fragments.  I'd try to print it out on a big scale--try to fill up the page as much as possible--easier to draw grids that way.  (5 grids per inch graph paper is 42 grids across, to give you an idea)  Or, you can try to print on graph paper, but that can get tricky to align properly.