Crochet Charts Design Software

Crochet Charts Design Software is a new program from Stitch Works Software that allows crochet designers to use symbols to create patterns. Several years ago, I had started working on a similar program but lost my programmer when his wife was laid off and he had to take on extra work. That being said, I’m glad that someone was able to finally complete a program for us to use.

The software is able to work with patterns that are either in rows or rounds, so you’re not limited to one type of design. When you create a new document, you select the chart style (row or round), set the number of rows or rounds (although label only says Rows), row spacing, starting default st count, i.e, ch 4, etc., and the default stitch.

On the right are your libraries, for available stitches, stitches used, and pattern colors. You can mirror symbols horizontally or vertically enabling you to concentrate on one section of your design without worrying about having to manually complete other sections. There are different edit modes which I find useful as it restricts you to that mode so that you don’t accidentally do something you didn’t mean to do.

Once you’ve set up your base chart, you can select a stitch from the main library and it is added to your Pattern Stitches library. Next, click on the pattern to place the stitch. You can immediately move the stitch if needed and use the tool buttons at the top of the screen to quickly select the rotate mode in order to rotate the stitch. Once the stitch is placed and rotated, click on the edit mode icon (or hotkey) to place the next stitch.

While you can pretty much jump in and start creating a design, there are things that you’ll need time to figure out as the documentation isn’t as detailed as it should be. It gives you the basics, but not in sufficient detail. Since I write user guides and do QA testing for a living, this is something I look at first thing when learning a new software.

I’m still having trouble figuring out how to use rows since the rows that are created use the default stitch selected. I’m assuming I’d have to change the stitches used and this would be where one of the things that irritated me would come into play. Sometimes when clicking on a stitch, it would change to another stitch. I haven’t figured out how it decides what stitch to change to and how to turn that on and off as needed.

Although the software uses the default stitch as the base for each row, you can select all the stitches on a row and use the row editor to set those stitches as a row. Each row/round has the instructions generated for it based on what stitches you set for that row/round. Of course, when I was trying to do this, the program crashed on me.

One issue I came across was that I couldn’t select multiple stitches and scale them all at once. I could only scale them one at a time. If that is possible, it isn’t covered in the user guide. When moving or rotating stitches, I was only able to use the mouse which can often be clumsy and I ended up with stitches that were rotated differently on opposite sides of another stitch. I’d really like to be able to use the arrow keys for more accurate movement, scaling, and rotation of stitches.

A second issue I found was that when I selected one of the alignment tools then selected to undo the change, the stitches did not return to their original location. Fortunately, I had a copy of the stitches in my clipboard still and was able to start over without too much difficulty.

In addition to the default stitch library, you can make your own stitches and import icon images to use for the stitches, so you’re not limited to the small library that the software currently comes with. Since you can export out stitch sets, new sets can be swapped between users in order to increase the base library each user has available. Since I use the extended single crochet and foundation single crochet a lot, those are two stitches that I’d add for my own use.

So, what is my final opinion on this software? Overall, it is an awesome program. It has some issues that need to be addressed, including the user guide, and hopefully the developer will be responsive to their users when adding new features. For a startup software program, it has great potential and I would highly recommend adding it to your tool set. The price is a little too high for my budget but hopefully I’ll be able to get it within the next year.

Oh, one more thing, if you need to use the software on multiple computers and/or platforms, the license allows you to do this. However, remember that the license is per user so you can’t be a business and allow several employees to use one license. You will need to buy a license per person in this case.