Krazy Stitcher

Quick Start

Click New to create a pattern. Choose a stitch type and grid size, pick a color from the palette on the right, then draw on the canvas. Your work auto-saves to your browser's local storage — no account needed.

Tools

• Draw — Paint beads with the selected color. Click or drag.
• Erase — Remove beads (set to empty/white).
• Fill — Flood-fill a contiguous region with the selected color.
• Color Pick — Click a bead to make its color active.
• Line — Click start and end points to draw a straight line.
• Rectangle / Filled Rect — Draw outlined or filled rectangles.
• Oval / Filled Oval — Draw outlined or filled ovals/ellipses within a bounding box.
• Triangle / Filled Triangle — Draw outlined or filled triangles (apex at top-center of bounding box).
• Diamond / Filled Diamond — Draw outlined or filled diamonds within a bounding box.
• Select — Click and drag to select a region. Use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Delete to copy, paste, or clear the selection.
• Text (Pro and Studio only) — Type text onto the canvas in a pixel font at sizes 5, 7, or 9 beads tall.
• Pan — Drag the canvas to scroll. Also hold Space + drag with any tool for temporary panning.

Stitch Types

• Loom — Square grid, simplest layout.
• Peyote — Offset rows (odd rows shift right half a bead).
• Brick — Like peyote rotated 90°; offset columns.
• Peyote 2-Drop through 9-Drop — Groups of N rows share the same offset.
• Gourd Stitch — Tubular peyote variant with alternating-row offset.
• Herringbone — Square grid with pair-bracket visual guides.
• RAW (Right Angle Weave) — Square grid with cross-stitch visual guides.
• Square Stitch — Aligned grid identical to Loom; thread passes through beads differently, but the pattern grid is the same.
• Spiral Rope — Each row rotates a quarter bead-width, creating the twisting look of a tubular spiral rope.
• Dutch Spiral — Same twisting offset as Spiral Rope, traditionally worked with two contrasting colors for a two-tone twist.
• Netting — Open, lacy diagonal lattice; rows offset by a third of a bead-width for a net-like, zigzag look.
• Shaped Peyote — Peyote with increase/decrease shaping; diamond boundary guides show where to add or skip beads for shaped pieces.
• Ndebele — Flat herringbone; beads sit in V-shaped pairs, with pair guides and V-connections shown.

Photo Import

There are several ways to load an image into Krazy Stitcher:

• Drag and drop — Drag any image from Finder, Photos, your Desktop, iCloud Drive, or a shared network drive directly onto the canvas. The Import Photo dialog opens automatically with your image loaded.
• Paste from clipboard — Copy an image or take a screenshot (Cmd+Shift+4 on Mac), then press Cmd+V (Mac) or Ctrl+V (Windows). The image loads straight into the Import Photo dialog.
• Click Import Photo — Opens the Import Photo dialog where you can click "Drop image here or click to browse" to open your system file picker. On Mac, this gives you access to local drives, iCloud Drive, network shares, and any mounted volume.
• Drop into the dialog — If the Import Photo dialog is already open, you can drag an image directly onto the drop zone at the top of the controls panel.

Once loaded, use the controls to adjust max bead width, max colors, quantization method (Median Cut or K-Means), Floyd-Steinberg dithering, and brightness/contrast/saturation sliders. The side-by-side preview updates live so you can dial in the look before importing.

Tip — Max Colors: The "Max Colors" setting is an upper limit, not a guarantee. The quantization algorithm may produce fewer colors if your image doesn't have enough variation, and mapping to the nearest bead color can further reduce the count. Check the status line below the preview to see the actual color count before importing.

Tip — Cleaning up after import: Photo imports often produce scattered single-color pixels (especially white dots). Click Cleanup in the toolbar to remove them automatically. Recolor (Pro and Studio only) can also help — upgrading unlocks it for every pattern, not just photo imports.

Color Tools

• Recolor (Pro and Studio only) — Replace every instance of one color with another. Useful for removing unwanted colors introduced during photo import.
• Merge (Pro and Studio only) — Combine two similar colors into one to simplify your palette.
• Cleanup — Remove isolated beads (single beads surrounded by a different color). Run this after photo import to clean up noise.
• Counts — See a sortable table of every color and how many beads you need. Low-count colors are highlighted.

Transform Tools

Mirror flips left-to-right. Flip flips top-to-bottom. Rotate rotates 90° clockwise (swaps width and height).

Export Options

• Export PDF — Generates a print-ready PDF with your pattern grid and color legend.
• Export PNG — Saves the pattern as a PNG image file.
• Text Chart — Exports a text file with row-by-row symbol charts and run-length text instructions, ready for printing.
• Save File and Load File — Export your pattern as a .ks JSON file for backup or sharing. Load .ks, .json, .ksp package files, or .oxs (Open Cross Stitch) files from MacStitch, WinStitch, Cross Stitch Pro, and other tools.
• Backup All — Your patterns live only in this browser (see the storage note in Tips below) — nothing is backed up automatically. Click Backup All regularly to export every pattern, custom palette, and inventory item as one .ksbackup file. Click Restore to load a .ksbackup file back in — existing data is kept, and duplicates are overwritten by the backup copy. This is also how to bring your patterns along if you upgrade to a different Krazy Stitcher tier on a different device. To back up to the cloud: save the .ksbackup file into a cloud-synced folder — such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive — and it will be copied off-device automatically and available on your other computers.
• Share — Package your pattern as a .ksp file (zip containing pattern data, PNG preview, PDF, text chart, bead count CSV, and metadata) and share it via your device’s share menu or download it. Check Protect the pattern data with a password to lock the editable .ks data behind a password of your choosing — useful if you’re selling a pattern and want buyers to view/print/stitch it but not reopen and resell the file itself. The PNG, PDF, and other previews in the package stay viewable either way. Following a pattern on your phone while you bead? Open the same .ks/.ksp file in Krazy Stitcher Companion, a separate phone-friendly pattern reader — see the Documentation hub for a link.
• Archive — Downloads a .ksp package of the pattern and removes it from browser storage. Use Load File to restore an archived pattern.

Do I Need to Know About "Layers"?

Not in Base. You draw directly on a single grid — what you see is what you get, no layers to manage. The only overlay you might see is the Trace Overlay (described below), which shows a faint copy of an imported photo to help you draw — that's just a visual guide, not a layer. Studio adds an optional multi-layer system for projects complex enough to benefit from one, if you ever outgrow the single-grid approach.

Other Features

• Trace Overlay — Click the Trace button in the toolbar to load a reference image as a semi-transparent overlay. Adjust opacity with the Trace slider or clear it. The trace does not auto-enable on photo import.
• Thread & Bead Estimator — Estimate how much thread and how many beads you'll need to complete a pattern.
• Row/Round Progress Counter — The small counter in the corner of the canvas tracks the physical stitching you've actually done, separate from the pattern design. Click + (or press ]) after finishing each row or round; the total is read automatically from the pattern's grid, with an optional manual override in Tools → Progress. Progress is saved per pattern and survives closing the app.
• Size Calculator — Click Size to see the finished dimensions of your pattern in real-world units (mm and inches) for various bead sizes.
• Fullscreen Mode — Click ⛶ Fullscreen in the toolbar (or press F11) to hide all browser chrome and give your pattern the entire screen. Press Esc or click the button again to exit.
• Scroll-Zoom Lock — Click the lock icon (🔒) in the left toolbar below the zoom buttons to prevent accidental zooming when scrolling. Click again to unlock.
• Touch & Pen Support — Draw, erase, fill, and use all tools with a touchscreen or digitizer pen/stylus. Touch input works alongside mouse input.
• Grid / Symbols — Toggle gridlines and color-symbol overlays for readability.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Tips

• Use scroll wheel to zoom in/out on the canvas. Click the lock icon (🔒) to disable scroll zoom if it gets in the way.
• Your patterns are stored only in this browser, on this computer — not in a folder, and not on any server. That means clearing your browser's history/site data, switching browsers, or moving to a new computer will erase them permanently, with no way to recover them. Click Backup All in the File menu regularly to save a real backup file you control.
• Use Duplicate in the pattern list to experiment without losing your original.
• After photo import, run Cleanup to remove isolated beads. Merge, to also combine similar colors, is available in Pro and Studio.
• In the Print… dialog, add your name or shop branding to printed PDFs, and save your favorite cell size/paper/orientation combo as a reusable Preset so you don't have to re-enter it next time.