Stitch charts: draw a colorwork or symbol chart

Stitch charts

A stitch chart is a grid of cells, one per stitch, with a symbol or a color in each. NodeStitch draws knitting charts with the Craft Yarn Council symbols and crochet charts with the standard crochet symbols, and prints a legend of the stitches you actually used. The round ? button in the bottom-right corner of the chart area opens help, the help chat and Report an issue without leaving the editor.

The stitch chart help is in five articles: this one for adding a chart, drawing and the palette; numbering, settings and chart types; the legend, written instructions and Follow; a chart from a photo; and sharing and exporting.

Add a chart

1. In the editor toolbar, click Chart.
2. Pick what the chart is for. Knitting: colorwork, lace, cables, stitch symbols, two-color brioche, mosaic knitting or a machine punch card. Crochet: colorwork, stitch symbols, corner to corner, filet, overlay mosaic, Tunisian, or a free-form diagram. Your project's craft is listed first. The choice sets the starting palette and the numbering, and you can change it later in Settings (your cells and palette stay). Settings also lists the other craft's chart types, so a knitting chart can become a crochet chart and back. A colorwork chart changes with nothing to ask: each color becomes the other craft's colorwork stitch. A chart with stitch symbols asks what each stitch becomes, since a knit stitch has no crochet equivalent to guess: pick a stitch of the same width, or keep it, and a kept one is marked on the palette until you replace it. Ctrl+Z undoes the change.
3. Give it a name, then set the size and gauge on the same screen. The finished size updates as you type, and the preview shows the cell shape your gauge gives: knitting cells come out wider than tall. A size below 1 or above your plan's limit is changed to fit, and the screen says so.
4. Click Create chart. The chart lands on your page and opens in the chart editor.

Double-click a chart on the page to open the editor again. Drag it to move it; drag a side handle to make it wider or narrower (the height follows the gauge). Click a chart to select it: a small toolbar above it has Edit, Legend and Numbers (each on or off), Duplicate and Delete. Duplicate makes a second chart with the same cells, palette and settings, named "(copy)", that you can change on its own. A new chart goes in the first free space on the page, top to bottom and left to right, so it never lands on top of another chart. When the page has no room for it, it goes on a new page right after, and a message says so; Ctrl+Z takes both back.

Delete a chart

Select a chart on the page and press Delete (or click Delete on its toolbar). If it is the only copy of that chart in the project, you are asked first: Delete chart, or Remove from page, keep chart. A kept chart is listed under Charts in this project when you click Chart in the toolbar, and Place on page puts it back. Either way, the message that follows has Undo, and Ctrl+Z works too.

Drawing

• Draw: click or drag over cells with the selected stitch or color. A quick drag paints every cell it passes over. Hold Shift while you drag to draw a straight line from where you started; it is drawn when you let go, and one undo takes it back. Press 1 to 9 and 0 to pick the first ten palette entries.
• Erase makes cells empty. Fill floods an area of one stitch with another, and Alt+click (Option+click on a Mac) with Fill changes every cell of that stitch on the chart, joined or not.
• Empty and no stitch are different. An empty cell is one nothing has been drawn in yet, or that you erased: the editor shows it with a faint dotted outline, and it is left out of counts and written instructions. No stitch is a stitch in the palette, a gray cell you draw on purpose where the fabric has no stitch, to shape a chart (around decreases, or the steps of a neckline). It is also left out of counts, and the legend lists it. On paper both print gray, since a printed chart has no "not drawn yet".
• Select a rectangle, then Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V to copy, cut and paste it, or Delete to clear it. Cutting is one step, so one undo puts the cells back. With the Select tool picked, a bar above the chart has Copy, Cut, Paste, Clear, Crop, Mirror and Rotate. A click in the empty space around the grid lets go of the selection.
• Eyedropper (I) picks up the stitch or color under the pointer. Stamp (T) pastes what you copied wherever you click, as many times as you like.
• Lines (L) draws outlines and repeat boxes over the grid. A drag draws a repeat box until you pick Line in the bar above the chart; then each drag draws a single line. Click a box or line to change its color, weight or label. A box with a repeat count of 3 means "work these stitches three times", and the written instructions say so.
• Change how many times a repeat is worked on the box itself. Click the count in the box's top-left corner (for example x3), with any tool, and type a new number or use − and +. Press Enter or click away to keep it, or Escape to leave it as it was. Nothing is redrawn, and the written instructions update at once. With the Lines tool picked, plain outlines show x1, so you can turn one into a repeat the same way. Lines move with the grid when you insert or delete rows and columns; a box whose cells are all deleted is removed and you are told.
• Rows & columns inserts or deletes rows and columns at the selection or the cell under the pointer, one or several at a time (set how many at the top of the menu). With nothing selected, it adds rows at the top or bottom and columns at the left or right edge of the chart. Right-click a cell for the same menu right there, with copy, cut and paste too. Deleting a row or column that runs through a cable removes the whole cable and tells you so; nothing is dropped silently.
• US terms / UK terms in the chart editor's top bar switches the project's stitch terms without leaving the editor (the same setting as the flag at the top of the page). Crochet stitch names in the palette, legend and written rows follow it.
• Wrong side (W) shows the chart from the back: columns mirrored, knit cells drawn as purls. It is a view, not a change; drawing still edits the same cells.
• Undo and redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y) work inside the chart. Closing the editor keeps them: open the chart again and Undo picks up where you left off, until you reload the page or restore a version. The page has its own undo for moving and resizing the chart.
• Keyboard: the arrow keys move a cursor from the cell you last pointed at, Shift+arrows extend a selection, and Space draws there (or erases, with Erase picked). Tool letters keep working after you click a tool.
• Escape cancels what you are doing: a menu, the line or repeat box you are editing (from its label field too), a selection, the cursor, or Follow. It never leaves the editor; click Done to go back to the page.
• Zoom: + and -, Ctrl+wheel, or pinch. The Fit button zooms the whole chart onto the screen, and clicking the zoom size goes back to the standard size.

On a tablet, one finger draws, two fingers pan and pinch to zoom. The Pan tool lets one finger scroll instead.

Palette

Click + to add a library stitch, or a color by picking it or typing its hex code. The whole library is free. For knitting it is grouped into sets: the standard Craft Yarn Council symbols first, then brioche, Estonian (nupps, gathered stitches, decreases through the back loop), beads, and wide cables from 3 to 12 stitches in both cable styles. For crochet it is grouped by family: basic stitches (including foundation and linked stitches), front and back loop (and the third loop of a half double crochet), post stitches at every height, increases, shells and V stitches, decreases and clusters (including the invisible decrease), puffs, bobbles and popcorns, crossed stitches, picots, loops and spike stitches, turning chains, rings and markers (join yarn, fasten off), Tunisian, mosaic, and direction arrows. Arrows and markers are notes on the chart, not stitches: they are left out of stitch counts and written instructions. Search finds a stitch by other names too, such as "puff", "crab stitch" or "invisible decrease". The sets after the standard one have no published standard symbol, so NodeStitch drew its own; the legend says what each one means. Right-click a palette entry (or hover it and click the dots) to change its color, give the color a name of your own, pick a yarn for it, merge it into another entry, swap it with another, or remove it. Remove unused clears entries no cell uses, and Import palette copies another chart's entries into this one; the new ones are marked New for a few seconds.

Yarns and brand palettes

A color can be a yarn. In a palette entry's menu, Pick a yarn… opens the yarn picker, and From a yarn… in the Add to palette panel adds a new entry the same way. The picker has two tabs:

• My yarns is your own list, free on every account: a color name with an optional brand, yarn line, color number, weight and screen color. Add yarns here by hand, or save one from a palette entry with Save to My yarns. Saved yarns can be picked on any chart.
• Brand palettes lists the colorways of about 85 yarn brands and 270 yarn lines (Bernat, Caron, Red Heart, Lion Brand, Knit Picks, Paintbox, Scheepjes, DROPS, Hobbii, Stylecraft, Malabrigo, Cascade and more). Search by brand, line or color name, or browse a brand's lines. Picking a colorway fills in its name, brand, line, weight and screen color. One chart can mix yarns from different brands.

The legend prints each color's letter and its yarn, for example Color A: Bernat Super Value, Grey Heather, and the Written tab uses the color's name, as in 2 Grey Heather. The yarn estimate names yarns the same way. Screen colors are approximate: buy by color name and number. The brand colorways come from temperature-blanket.com under CC BY 4.0; see About color data, which also says how to report a wrong color. Some lines, such as Bernat, Caron, Red Heart, Patons, Lily Sugar'n Cream and Rowan, have a Where to buy link to the retailer's page for that yarn. Those are affiliate links, explained in the same article.

Custom stitches (Pro) let you add a symbol of your own: letters, a dot, a slash, a triangle and so on, or a copy of a library symbol, with the stitch counts you give it. Leave a count blank if it varies, and the count check will say "unknown" for that row rather than guess. The Letters box shows the letters the symbol will draw (the start of the abbreviation until you type your own).

Layers, Text, Trace and Lock

Layers in the chart editor's top bar shows, hides or locks what is not a stitch. The stitches are one grid and always shown. Lines and repeat boxes can be hidden (to paint without them in the way) or locked (so a click cannot move or change them); Marks (arrows, join yarn, fasten off) can be hidden; and a trace image can be hidden. A hidden layer is hidden on the page and in exports too. Written instructions and stitch counts never change with a layer: a hidden repeat box still repeats.

Text in the chart editor's top bar turns words into stitches: type them, pick Pixel letters (crisp capitals 7 rows tall) or a sans serif, serif or bold font at the height you want, and Stamp it on the chart. The letters take the stitch or color selected on the palette, and the Stamp tool puts them where you click, with their top left on that cell. Only the letter cells change. Ctrl+Z takes them back.

Trace in the chart editor's top bar lays a photo over the grid to draw from, stretched to the whole chart: choose an image, set how see-through it is, hide it while you check your work, or remove it. Only you see it, and only in the editor: it is never on the page, in an export or on a share link. It is stored like your page photos and counts toward your storage.

Lock in the chart editor's top bar keeps a finished chart from being changed by accident: while it is locked, the drawing tools, the palette, Rows & columns, Settings, Cut, Paste and Undo do nothing, and a bar says so. You can still look at it, select and copy cells, follow it row by row, export it and share it. Unlock gives the tools back. A duplicate of a locked chart starts unlocked.

What is free and what is Pro

• Free: every drawing and editing tool, lines and repeat boxes, the flat, in-the-round and right-side-only numbering with every label option, every symbol set including JIS, the legend, the count check, the yarn estimate, the first three rows of written instructions, Follow, share links, free-form diagrams, charts from a photo, and charts up to 300 x 300.
• Pro: charts up to 1,000 x 1,000, full written instructions with Add to pattern, custom stitches, the special chart types (corner to corner, two-color brioche, mosaic knitting, overlay mosaic crochet, Tunisian crochet and machine punch cards), chart export to PDF, PNG or SVG, and the photo import's AI help (keep small details also works with a free account's three free tries; clean areas and background removal are Pro only).