Cross Count, screen by screen

The five tabs

Where: the row across the top of every screen.

Five tabs are always in view, in this order: Home, Import, Design, WIP and Portfolio.

• Home is where you start: a picture in, and your most recent projects.
• Import is the four-step wizard that turns a picture into a chart.
• Design is your library of charts. Open one and the tab shows that design, with everything that changes what the chart is.
• WIP (work in progress) is your library of pieces being stitched. Open one and the tab shows the stitching screen, with everything that keeps your place.
• Portfolio holds finished pieces.

The lit tab is where you are. Tapping the lit Design or WIP tab while a project is open takes you back to that library.

When it opens. For a second after you tap the icon the screen is dark with the Godot logo on it: the engine the app is built on, loading. Home follows.

See also: Home, the libraries, the Design screen, the WIP screen.

Home

Where: the Home tab.

Your stitching corner starts a new project. Choose a picture opens your phone’s photo picker, then the Import wizard at step 2 with the picture chosen. Take a photo (Android phones with a camera) opens the camera instead; see Step 1 for the viewfinder. Draw your own (Advanced only) opens a drawing canvas; see Draw your own. The first time you choose a picture, a phone that needs it asks “Open your photos?” before the picker opens.

Recent designs and Recent work in progress show the three you touched last. A design’s card shows its size in squares, its number of colors and the day it was last changed. A work’s card shows its size, its colors, how many stitches are done and a percentage, with no date. Tap a card to open it; a design’s card says Opening… while its picture loads. Tap See all for the full library.

Portfolio showcase goes to your finished pieces. Settings, top right, opens the Settings screen.

See also: Importing a picture, Draw your own, the libraries, Settings.

Designs, WIP and Portfolio: the libraries

Where: the Design, WIP and Portfolio tabs, and See all on Home.

Each library lists every project of its kind, the one you used last at the top. Find a project by name filters the list as you type. The Design library also has Choose a picture, as on Home. A design’s card shows its name, its size, its colors and the day it was last changed. A work’s card shows name, size and colors, then how many stitches are done and a percentage, with no date. A finished piece shows the date it was finished.

Tap a card to open the project. Tap the … at the right of a card for Rename and Delete. Delete asks first. Deleting a design does not affect any work made from it (a work carries its own copy of everything), and the question says so.

Names. A new project is named after the day it was made (“Design 15 Sep”); if your library already has that name, it gets a number (“Design 15 Sep 2”). A work made from a design inherits the design’s name when it is made.

See also: Home, Stitch it, Complete and the Portfolio, project files.

Basic and Advanced

Where: Settings → How much do you want to see?

How to switch

1. Go to Home and tap Settings, top right.
2. Under How much do you want to see?, tap Advanced (or Basic).
3. The change is immediate, everywhere, and remembered.

Basic shows what a first project needs: choose a picture, fit it to your cloth, a few sliders, a chart to stitch from, ticking stitches off, the row highlight, progress photos, every export, and your project files and backups. Advanced shows everything else: the hand tools, the full set of picture and stitching settings, and drawing your own picture. Notes on a piece are in both. Switch whenever you like, in either direction; nothing you have made changes.

Throughout this guide, a control that only appears in Advanced is marked Advanced. The same screens, side by side:

Basic

Advanced

Basic

Advanced

Basic

Advanced

Basic

Advanced

Basic

Advanced

Every feature, by mode

The honesty rule. If a chart was made in Advanced with a setting that Basic hides, and that setting is not at its default, the app shows that control in Basic anyway. Strands and Spare thread on the thread list follow the same rule.

See also: Settings, the hand tools, Row highlight, Notes, project files.

Touch and gestures

Everywhere a chart is shown, the same two rules apply:

• One finger does the tool. With no tool armed, one finger drags the chart around. With the pencil, backstitch, eraser or marking armed, one finger draws or marks.
• Two fingers move and zoom, always, with any tool armed. Pinch to zoom, drag with two fingers to move. Putting a second finger down also cancels any stroke or rectangle the first finger had started.

The two framing screens, step 3 of the import and the Design screen’s Framing, work the same way: one finger or two move the picture, and only a pinch zooms it, about your fingers.

Every feature has a button; the one shortcut is a double-tap to zoom a progress photo, and a pinch does the same.

See also: the hand tools, marking, bars that slide away.

Step 1: Pick a picture

Where: the Import tab, or Choose a picture on Home.

Choose a picture opens your photo library, as on Home; on a phone that needs it, the first time asks “Open your photos?” Take a photo opens the camera on phones that have one: a viewfinder headed Take a photo, with 1×, 2× and 4× zoom chips (a pinch zooms too), a Take the picture button and Cancel. If the camera cannot start, or you refuse it permission, a Choose a picture instead button takes you to your photos. A photo taken this way is not saved to your gallery, so leaving the wizard with it asks first. With a picture already chosen, this step shows it, with Keep this picture to carry on. The picture is kept behind your project at up to 4,096 pixels on its long side, so later changes lose no detail.

What makes a good picture. A clear subject, good light, and not too much fine texture. A chart 140 squares tall has 140 rows, so a face 20 pixels high in the chart is 20 stitches high. Crop tight in step 3 if the subject is small.

See also: Home, Step 2: your cloth, Draw your own.

Step 2: Your cloth

Set the Width and Height of the finished stitched area, from 2 to 24 inches in quarter-inch steps; the centimeters are shown beside. Then pick the Fabric count, the number of threads per inch of the cloth you own (see count in the glossary).

The line underneath does the sum: 112 × 140 stitches — 15,680 squares. Change the count and the stitches change, not the size of the thing you will frame. Two limits: the biggest chart the app makes, 320 stitches across and 400 down (a full 24 inches a side on 11 count, about 23 across on 14, 18 on 18), and the smallest, 20 across. Past either, the size gives way instead, and the line says so and gives the size the piece will finish at.

Basic offers the common counts: 11, 14, 16 and 18 count Aida, and 28 count over two. Advanced lists all 17 cloths under three headings: Aida — one stitch per block (6 count Herta through 20 count Aida, and 22 count Hardanger), Evenweave & linen — over two threads (25 to 40 count), and Over one thread — petit point (28 and 32 count). The chips are one choice across the three groups, and a count never sits alone on a row, on any phone or text size.

Each slider has − and + for one step at a time; tap the number to type a value.

Over two. A count written “28 / 2” means a 28 count evenweave stitched over two threads, which makes 14 stitches to the inch. The app does that arithmetic.

Carried over. The cloth (size and count) and your taste settings are remembered for the next import: Color, Fewer lone stitches, Smooth out grain, Protect small details, Blending, Strands and Spare thread. Framing, Brightness, Sharpen, Contrast, How many colors, Fabric color and Remove the background start fresh for each picture.

See also: Fabric on the Design screen, the glossary, for count and over two.

Step 3: Place it on the cloth

The white frame has the proportions of the stitched area you set in step 2. Drag the picture to place it, with one finger or two, and pinch to zoom; the zoom is about your fingers. Whatever is dimmed outside the frame is not part of the pattern.

Zooming out stops where the frame is full, so a picture shaped differently from your cloth cannot fit in whole. To fit more of it, ← Change cloth goes back to step 2.

Leaving asks first. Once a picture has been to this step, anything that would drop it (a tab, Home, the back gesture out of the wizard, or choosing another picture) asks “Leave this picture behind?”; your framing and color choices go with it. A photo taken in the app, saved nowhere else on your phone, asks “Throw away this photo?” from any step; so does a drawing. Keep working on it leaves you where you were.

The original picture is kept, so you can come back to this at any time from the Design screen’s Framing section.

See also: Framing on the Design screen.

Step 4: Finish the pattern

A small preview at the top updates as you adjust; while the chart is being made, Making your chart… shows at its foot. The controls are the same as on the Design screen, so nothing decided here is final:

• Colors: how many threads the chart may use, 4 to 60. See Colors.
• Brightness, and in Advanced Sharpen, Contrast and Color. See Light.
• Fewer lone stitches and Smooth out grain Advanced. See Tidy. Fewer lone stitches starts at Heavy, and a new import keeps the level of the project you had open. In both modes a line says the level: “Fewer lone stitches: Heavy. Change it later in Design → Tidy.”

Open the chart saves the design to your library and opens it on the Design screen. From then on everything is saved automatically.

See also: Colors, Light, Tidy, the Design screen.

Draw your own Advanced

Where: Home → Draw your own.

A painting canvas; the result goes through the same conversion as a photograph. Pick a shape (Square, Portrait, Landscape), a color from the row, a brush Size, and a tool: Brush, Line, Box, Oval, Fill (flood-fills an area) or Erase. Undo takes back the last stroke; Clear empties the canvas. The shape chips go away at your first stroke; the Size slider hides while Fill is chosen.

One finger draws; two fingers move and zoom the canvas. Make the chart hands the drawing to the Import wizard at the cloth step; on a blank page it says “Draw something first.” Cancel throws the drawing away, and asks first.

A drawing is not lost by a phone call. The canvas is stashed as you draw, and if the app is closed on you, Draw your own offers it back next time.

See also: Step 2: your cloth, the hand tools, for drawing on a chart instead.

What is where

Under the tabs are two rows:

• Undo, Redo, Options, Export and Stitch it. Options is how the chart is shown; Export leads to printing; Stitch it turns the design into a piece to stitch.
• The sections: Fabric, Framing, Colors, Light, Tidy, Draw Advanced, and Hide. Tapping a section drops its card over the chart; tapping the lit section again puts it away.

The rest of the screen is the chart. One finger drags it, two fingers zoom. With Grid lines on (Options), hairlines mark every square, a heavier line every ten, numbers along the top and left edges count squares, and small arrows on all four edges mark the center. Grid lines are off when a picture first opens.

See also: Options, Export, Stitch it, Hide.

Options: how the chart is shown

Where: Design → Options.

Thread colors, Symbols and Grid lines are three separate switches, so there are six ways to look at one chart:

• Thread colors on, the others off: roughly what the piece will look like stitched.
• Thread colors and Symbols: the working chart, every square in its thread color with its symbol.
• Symbols alone: black on white. The darkest threads carry the heaviest symbols, so the picture still reads.

Thread colors and Symbols are never both off: switch one off and the other comes on. Symbols are only drawn once you are zoomed in enough to read them, so switching them on, or switching Thread colors off, zooms you in if you were not; the first time, a message says why. With Thread colors off you cannot zoom out past that point, and while your fingers move the chart, pale gray squares stand in for the symbols until you let go.

Fit the whole chart on screen zooms out to show everything. With Thread colors off it can only go as far as the symbols can be read, so on a chart too big to show whole at that zoom the row reads Zoom out as far as symbols show instead. Save as a .ccdesign file writes the design as one file; see files and backup. Thread list opens the thread list.

Tap anywhere outside the popover to close it. The three switches are remembered with the design.

See also: the thread list, .ccdesign files, Options on a work.

Fabric

Where: Design → Fabric.

The same Width, Height and Fabric count as step 2 of the import, the counts under the same three cloth headings. Changing them here rebuilds the chart at the new stitch count. Anything you painted by hand is scaled along with it.

Advanced adds three controls under the count:

• Fabric color: White, Ecru, Cream, Antique white, Light oatmeal, Pale blue or Black. The chart is drawn on that color, and the next control uses it.
• Leave fabric-colored areas unstitched: squares whose thread would be nearly the color of the cloth are left blank instead. Blank squares show as bare cloth on the chart and in the count.
• Bare fabric each side: 2, 3 or 4 inches of margin. It changes nothing in the chart; it feeds the Fabric to cut line, the size to cut so there is enough to mount and frame.

See also: Step 2: your cloth, Remove the background, which also leaves cloth bare, Trim to the picture.

Framing

Where: Design → Framing.

Reopens step 3 of the import with the original picture. Drag with one finger or two to change what is inside the frame, and pinch to zoom about your fingers; the frame stays the shape of your cloth. Use this commits the new framing, a single Undo step on the Design screen. Cancel, or the phone’s back gesture, puts the framing back as it was. ← Change cloth also drops the new framing, and opens the Fabric card for the size and count.

See also: Step 3: place it, Undo.

Colors

Where: Design → Colors.

How many colors is how many different threads the chart may use, from 4 to 60. The chart previews live while you drag and settles when you let go. Twenty to thirty is the sweet spot for a photograph; fewer makes a shorter shopping list and a simpler piece, more keeps subtler shading at the cost of more thread changes. Open How many to pick for the app’s advice for this chart.

The threads are chosen from all 489 DMC shades, and no two in one chart sit closer than the eye can separate.

See also: the thread list, Tidy, the color picker.

Light

Where: Design → Light.

The sliders preview the chart while you drag and settle when you let go. In the card’s order:

• Balance the light for me: a one-tap fix for a photograph that is too dark or flat. It is on for a new import; tap it off to keep the picture as it was. Reset Advanced, beside it, puts the sliders back to the shipped defaults.
• Sharpen Advanced: shrinking a picture to a few thousand squares softens it; a little sharpening back usually makes it read.
• Brightness, −25 to +25.
• Contrast and Color Advanced: floss is duller than a screen, so a little extra of both helps. Color’s shipped default is 1.06; higher pushes toward brighter threads.
• Magic touch-up: a bundle of sharpening, contrast and light balance. It is on for every imported photo (not for a drawing), and the button then reads Magic touch-up is on. Tap it off and sharpening and contrast go back to their defaults; Balance the light for me is left as it is.
• Smooth out grain Advanced: blurs a grainy phone photo before charting. Off by default: averaging down already removes most grain, and this also blurs detail.
• Remove the background, last on the card: for a subject on a plain wall, table or sky. Everything the app can reach from the edge of the picture in the background’s colors is left as bare cloth. If it removes too much or too little, switch it off and try a tighter framing. Squares you paint by hand are never removed.

See also: Tidy, Colors, Troubleshooting: brighter than the photo.

Tidy

Where: Design → Tidy.

A chart straight from a photograph is full of lone stitches: a color that appears once, surrounded by something else, a thread change for one cross. Tidy deals with them.

• Fewer lone stitches: Off, Lightest, Light, Medium, Firm or Heavy. Each step removes more lone stitches by giving them the color of their neighbors, and the chart previews as you drag. It starts at Heavy, and a new import keeps the level of the project you had open. Open What this does for the before-and-after numbers on this chart.
• Protect small details Advanced: keeps any small patch that stands out sharply from its surroundings. A pupil is two or three dark stitches with nothing like them nearby, and tidying would take it; this keeps pupils, catchlights and nostrils.
• Blending Advanced: None, Subtle, Smooth or Photographic. None is right for almost every picture. Subtle mixes two close shades in flat areas to smooth stripes in skies. Smooth blends flat areas as a regular checkerboard you can stitch one color at a time. Photographic blends everywhere, the way printed photos do; it looks best on screen and makes by far the most lone stitches.

See also: Light, Outline it for me, which tidies the edge first.

Draw: the hand tools Advanced

Where: Design → Draw.

Tap a chip to arm a tool; one finger then draws with it. Tap the lit chip again, or a different chip, to change tools. Two fingers still move and zoom.

• Pencil paints squares in the chosen color. When you arm it, a row appears asking Freehand or Straight lines. Freehand follows your finger. Straight lines lays a rubber-band run from where you pressed to where you are, snapped to horizontal, vertical or a true diagonal. The row hides once you have answered; arm the pencil again to see it. With Straight lines chosen the chip reads Pencil line; Freehand puts the name back.
• Backstitch lays a line from hole to hole, corner to corner of the squares. Drag from the first corner to the last. It asks Freehand or Straight lines too, and reads Backstitch line while Straight lines is chosen. Black (DMC 310) is the default backstitch color; the Color chip changes it.
• Color shows the thread in your hand and opens the color picker.
• Erase rubs out. Its row asks what it should take: Both, Squares (only squares, leaving backstitch alone) or Backstitch (only lines, leaving squares alone), and the chip then says which: Erase squares, Erase lines, or plain Erase for both. Tap a square to take the stitch out, leaving bare cloth; a square you painted yourself goes back to the conversion’s color instead. Drag across a run of squares to do the same to each; tap or drag across a backstitch line to remove it. Opening another design puts the eraser back to both, and both pens back to Freehand.

Paint and backstitch survive every slider: change the colors or the light and your squares stay put. A painted color that the chart did not already use is added to the thread list and the shopping list. Every stroke is one Undo step.

The symbol alphabet has 67 symbols. If a chart already uses every one, a painted color it cannot give a symbol to is left out, and a message says so.

See also: the color picker, Outline it for me, Undo and Redo, touch and gestures.

Outline it for me Advanced

Where: Design → Draw → Backstitch → Outline it for me.

Arm Backstitch, tap Outline it for me, then:

• Around the subject lays black backstitch around the edge where the picture meets its background. It works best on a subject against a plain ground. It tidies the edge before it draws, so the line follows the shape: the fringe, the one-square rim a photograph leaves where the subject meets the background, charted as a pale thread barely different from the ground; and the strays, single squares and specks outside the line. On a solid color background both are given that color; on bare cloth the stitch is taken out. Everything it changes is one Undo.
• Around every color outlines the boundaries between threads, coloring-book style. Patches too small for a line of their own, and neighbors too close in color to tell apart, are drawn as part of what surrounds them. It is still thousands of stitches on an ordinary chart, so it says how many and asks before it runs.

The card rolls up afterward so you can see the result. Undo removes the whole outline in one step.

See also: the hand tools, Remove the background, Undo.

The color picker Advanced

Where: Design → Draw → Color.

In this chart shows the threads the chart already uses, so painting in one of them adds nothing to the shopping list. Search 489 DMC colors finds any shade by its number or its name (“310”, “garnet”). Tap a swatch to choose it; the Color chip takes that color, and it stays chosen until you pick another.

A new color applies to what you paint from now on; squares already painted keep theirs.

See also: the hand tools, the thread list.

Hide, Show bars, and bars that slide away

Where: Hide at the end of the section row; Show bars in the top right when the bars are away; Settings → Room for the chart.

Hide puts the bars away: if a section card is open it closes that first, and pressed again it hides every bar, tabs included. A small Show bars pill in the top corner brings them back. The app remembers your choice per screen.

With a tool armed, the pill names it, and the Draw chip stays lit: “Pencil · Show bars” or “Backstitch · Show bars”, and with Straight lines on, “Straight pencil · Show bars” or “Straight backstitch · Show bars”. The eraser reads “Eraser · Show bars” when it takes both, and says so when it is set to one: “Erase squares · Show bars”, “Erase lines · Show bars”.

Bars slide away on the Design screen (Settings → Room for the chart, off by default) does this on its own: when you drag or pinch the chart with no section card open, the bars go. The stitching screen has no such setting: its bars stay until you tap Hide. See the WIP screen.

See also: Settings, the WIP screen, touch and gestures.

Undo and Redo

Where: the first two chips on the tools row.

Undo takes back the last change, whatever it was: a slider, a switch, a framing, a stroke, an outline. Redo puts it back. The history lasts while the project stays open: going to Home, Export or the thread list and back keeps it. Opening another project, or closing the app, drops it. The chart rebuilds after each undo, so a big chart takes a moment.

On a work, Undo and Redo reverse marking gestures instead; see marking.

See also: marking on a work, the hand tools.

Threads, skeins and the shopping list

Where: Options → Thread list, on a design or a work.

One row per thread, in order of how much of it the piece needs: the chart symbol, a swatch, the DMC number and name, how many stitches and what share of the piece that is, how many skeins to buy, and how much of a skein it uses. Backstitch has its own rows under a Backstitch heading, with the number of squares its lines cross.

• Strands: Suit the fabric (the usual number for that count), or 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6. It changes the skein arithmetic, not the chart.
• Spare thread: 10% thrifty, 15% usual or 20% generous, added before the skeins are rounded up.
• Copy this list puts the whole list on the clipboard as text, to paste into a message or a shopping app.

← Options at the top left takes you back to the chart with Options open again; the phone’s back gesture does the same.

On a work, the list adds a Thread ready toggle under every thread and a count at the top (“1 of 17 threads ready”), so you can tick off what you have bought. Readiness is saved with the piece and is separate from stitching progress. On a finished piece the toggles become plain Ready or Needed labels.

Screen colors are approximate. DMC has never published screen values for its floss; every table is someone’s sampling of a shade card. Check a real shade card before you buy.

See also: Colors, Export, what leaves the phone.

The preview

Where: Export on the tools row, on a design or a work.

The preview shows the printed document in order: the whole chart on one page, then each sheet of the chart at stitching scale, then the thread list, 22 rows to a page; a longer list goes on over more pages at the same size (“Thread list, page 2 of 3”). Back and Next page through them. The line under the format says what will be written (“One PDF, 11 pages. 9 sheets to print, plus the whole chart and the thread list.”), and the line under that the file size (“About 4.4 MB.”).

Sheets are 50 squares by 60, and three squares are repeated on every join. Symbols, grid, heavy lines and row numbers match the chart on screen. The sheets always carry the symbols: on the thread colors when Thread colors is on, black on white when it is off. Under each sheet a line says what it is: “Rose · Sheet 5 of 9 · columns 48–97 · rows 58–117”, in the chart’s own numbers. A chart small enough for one sheet carries the same line under its chart page.

See also: PDF, PNG images, Pattern Keeper, Trim to the picture, Printing it right.

PDF, PNG images, Pattern Keeper

• PDF: one document, every page. The usual choice for printing.
• PNG images: the same pages as separate images, plus a picture of the piece stitched, with the thread list as a text file beside them (its first line is the chart’s name). For a print shop, or for pasting into something else.
• Pattern Keeper: a PDF written the way the Pattern Keeper app reads charts. The whole chart goes on one large page, with the symbols as real text rather than a picture, and the thread list follows on ordinary pages; the preview pages through them (“The whole chart”, “Thread list, page 1 of 2”). Full crosses only: Pattern Keeper cannot take backstitch, so any you have laid is left out; print it from the ordinary PDF. The format carries 72 threads at most; a chart with more is refused, with “This chart has 80 threads and the Pattern Keeper format carries 72. Use fewer colors, or save the ordinary PDF.”

Save to phone writes the files to the Documents → Cross Count folder, named after the project. The line under the button names the folder, and after a save the file it wrote: “Saved as Rose.pdf in Documents/Cross Count.” While it saves, the button is shut and counts the pages, Drawing the pages… (3 of 14); a Pattern Keeper file shows no count. A design and its work share a name, and a project remembers its file name, so saving again replaces the old export.

See also: Printing it right, the thread list, project files, for a whole project in one file.

Trim to the picture

When the picture sits in a plain background (a subject on bare cloth, or with Remove the background on), a Trim to the picture switch appears under the format. It crops every sheet, the whole-chart page, the preview and the thread counts to the stitched area, and the note says how many sheets it saves. The switch only appears when it saves at least one sheet. Row and column numbers stay the chart’s own, so “row 143” on paper is row 143 on the screen.

Pattern Keeper always takes the whole chart. With the switch on, its sentence says “Trim to the picture is off for this file”, and the trim is back when you choose PDF or PNG images again. A new picture or another project starts with the switch off.

See also: Remove the background, Leave fabric-colored areas unstitched, the preview.

Printing it right

• Print at 100%, never “fit to page”. Fit to page shrinks the squares until the symbols cannot be read.
• Tape sheets together on the repeated three-square overlap; the line under each sheet says which columns and rows it holds, so two neighbors share three of them.
• The thread list page is your shopping list; take a photo of it or use Copy this list on the thread list screen. Its heading names the chart and the number of strands the skeins were worked out for.

See also: the preview, Troubleshooting.

Stitch it: a design becomes a work

Where: Design → Stitch it.

Stitch it freezes the design into a new work in your WIP library. The work carries its own copy of the chart, the picture and every setting, so changing or deleting the design afterward does not touch the piece. As the work opens, a message says what to do next: “Choose your thread, then drag a rectangle over the stitches you have finished”.

One design can be stitched more than once. Tap Stitch it on a design you have already started and it asks: Carry on opens the piece you began, and Start again asks once more (“Start a second piece from this design? The one you began stays on Home as it is.”) before making a second, separate work.

A work’s chart is fixed. To change it, Make a design copy gives you an editable design from the work.

See also: the Design screen, Make a design copy, the libraries.

What is where

• Undo, Redo, Options, Export, Complete. Undo and Redo reverse marking; Complete finishes the piece.
• Mark arms rectangle marking. Row arms the row highlight. Photos opens the album. Choose your thread opens the thread panel and then shows the thread in your needle. Hide puts the bars away.
• The progress line: stitches done of the total, and the percentage. The percentage only reads 100 when every stitch is in.

Hide also closes the thread list, Notes or Options if one is open; the Show bars pill brings the bars back, and on a work they never hide by themselves. The pill says what one finger does while they are away: “Marking DMC 310 · Show bars”, “Unmarking DMC 310 · Show bars” or “Row · Show bars”.

See also: Choose your thread, Marking, Hide and Show bars, Complete.

Choose your thread

Where: the Choose your thread button on the Mark bar.

Tap Choose your thread and tap the thread in your needle. From then on:

• The chart dims every other color.
• Only that thread’s squares can be marked; a rectangle dragged over other colors leaves them alone.
• The button on the bar shows the thread, and each row in the panel shows how many of its stitches are done. Past six threads the panel goes two to a row, each reading number, count, then name (“814 · 0/1,117 · Garnet Dark”), so a long name is cut short and never the count. At Large text, or where a count would not fit half a row, it stays one to a row.

Under the threads: Show every thread to put the whole picture back with nothing chosen, and Mark all done to tick off every square of the chosen thread in one go. Tapping the chosen thread again also lets it go. Find next stitch (see below) sits at the foot of the panel, always in view.

All colors, the first row of the panel, is for a section or a row you finished in every color at once. With it chosen, a rectangle and Row done tick every stitched square they cover, never bare cloth. The bar reads All colors, and with the bars away the pill reads “Marking all colors · Show bars”. It has no Find next stitch and no Mark all done; Row done on a row with nothing to stitch says “Nothing to stitch in row 30”. Show every thread lets it go.

Marking needs a thread. Tap Mark with none chosen and the thread panel opens instead, with a message saying why, and the thread you choose from it arms Mark.

See also: Marking stitches done, Find next stitch, the thread list.

Marking stitches done

Where: Mark on the Mark bar, then a rectangle on the chart.

Choosing a thread arms Mark, unless Row is lit: then the thread is for Row done, and the band stays. With Mark armed, drag a rectangle over the squares you have finished, from any corner to the opposite one, and let go: every square of the chosen thread inside it is marked done. Squares of other threads, and blank cloth, are left alone. One rectangle is one Undo step.

While Mark is on, a row under the bar offers Mark complete or Unmark, the chosen one lit pink. Unmark makes a rectangle take marks off instead. A new thread puts it back to Mark complete. The row goes when Mark is turned off, when a thread is let go, and on a finished piece.

A finished square is shaded green, and once you are zoomed in far enough to stitch from, it gets a tick of its own. The count and percentage on the progress line follow every gesture, and they are saved with the piece within a few seconds.

Two fingers cancel. If a rectangle starts going wrong, put a second finger down: the rectangle is dropped and the two fingers move the chart instead.

See also: Choose your thread, Only what I’ve stitched, Undo and Redo, touch and gestures.

Only what I’ve stitched

Where: Options → Only what I’ve stitched, on a work.

A fourth switch in a work’s Options: the chart shows only the squares you have marked, in their thread colors, on bare cloth: the piece as it is on the fabric right now. Everything else about the chart still works in this view.

See also: Options on a work, Marking.

Find next stitch

Where: Choose your thread → Find next stitch.

With a thread chosen, Find next stitch moves the chart to the next square of that thread not yet marked, draws a ring around it, never smaller than a fingertip at any zoom, and says the row and column. It keeps your zoom. Tap it again for the one after, and it wraps around to the beginning when it reaches the end.

Find never marks anything, and marking a rectangle never moves the chart. If Only what I’ve stitched is on, Find switches it off so you can see the square. When every square of the thread is marked, it says so instead of moving.

See also: Choose your thread, Only what I’ve stitched.

Row highlight and Row done

Where: Row on the Mark bar.

For stitching in rows rather than by color. Arm Row and tap a row of the chart: a band follows it and the progress line says which row it is. Tap the same row again to clear it. The band is saved with the piece, so it is there next time.

A Row done button appears on the progress line, white words on rose. It ticks the squares of the thread in your needle in that row, never the whole row, and moves the band down one. On a row with none of that thread it ticks nothing, says so (“No 300 in row 30”) and leaves the band where it is. Until a thread is chosen, a tap opens the thread list to choose one; with Row lit, the thread you choose keeps the band and does not arm Mark. Both are in Basic and Advanced alike.

Row and Mark are never on together; arming one turns the other off.

See also: Marking, Basic and Advanced.

Progress photos

Where: Photos on the Mark bar.

An album of the piece as it grew. Take a photo or Choose from your photos adds one, stamped with the date, the time and how far along the piece was. The camera is the same viewfinder as Step 1’s, with the line “Fit your stitching in the frame.” Tap a picture to see it big; pinch, or double-tap, to zoom, and once zoomed in a Fit button puts it back.

The … on a photo offers Rename, Add a note (Edit note once it has one) and Remove. A note is typed under the picture, with a Done button; the keyboard never covers what you are typing. Remove asks first; a photo taken in the app has no other copy, and one chosen from your photos leaves the original in your gallery.

Photos are part of the work: they travel with it in a .ccwork file, and the last one becomes the piece’s cover in the Portfolio when you finish.

See also: Complete and the Portfolio, .ccwork files.

Notes

Where: Options → Notes, on a work.

A place for what you would otherwise write on the pattern: which needle, how many strands, where you stopped, what to change next time. Saved as you type, with everything else about the piece; a Done button under the text puts the keyboard away. Notes are in Basic and Advanced alike.

See also: Options on a work.

Options on a work

Where: Options on the tools row of a work.

• Thread colors, Symbols, Grid lines: as on a design. Only what I’ve stitched: see above. Fit the whole chart on screen, which reads Zoom out as far as symbols show when it cannot, as on a design.
• Notes: see above.
• Save as a .ccwork file: the piece, its chart, its picture, its photos and its progress as one file. See files and backup.
• Thread list: the thread list, with the Thread ready toggles (read-only Ready / Needed labels on a finished piece).
• Make a design copy: a new, editable design made from this work’s own copy of the picture and settings; the work itself is untouched. It is only offered on a piece that carries its design; a piece from an older version says “This older piece has no saved original design.”

See also: Options on a design, the thread list, project files.

Complete, Portfolio and Reopen

Where: Complete on the tools row; the Portfolio tab.

Complete asks “Finished?” and, if the chart is not fully ticked, says how much is. Yes, finished! dates the piece and moves it to the Portfolio, where its cover is its latest photo, or the chart if there are none. It does not mark the remaining stitches.

A finished piece still opens: its chart, photos, notes and thread list are all there to read, but marking is off (and Thread ready shows as plain Ready or Needed labels). Reopen puts it back in progress with everything as it was.

See also: the libraries, progress photos, the thread list.

It saves itself

There is no Save button for a project. Every change is written to the phone a few seconds after you make it, and again when you leave a screen or put the phone down. A change of zoom or position is saved too, without counting as an edit. If a save fails (a full phone, usually), the app says so once and keeps trying, saying it again only after your next change; a tap on Stitch it or Open the chart always says it, and nothing replaces the project or closes the app without asking first.

See also: project files, what leaves the phone.

.ccdesign and .ccwork files

Where: Options → Save as a .ccdesign file (design) or Save as a .ccwork file (work); Settings → Project files → Open a project file.

A whole project in one file, picture and all, written to Documents → Cross Count. A .ccdesign holds the picture at full quality and every setting. A .ccwork holds the frozen chart, the picture, the settings, the progress, the photos, the notes and the thread readiness. Either can be moved to a new phone, kept as a backup, or handed to someone else.

Open a project file on the Settings screen brings one in. The file is checked from end to end before it is added to your library; one that does not pass is refused. An imported project gets a new identity and never overwrites one you already have.

Saving a project file again with the same name replaces the earlier file only once the new one is completely written, so a failed save on a full phone leaves the old file intact.

See also: Options on a design, Options on a work, Back up all projects, Settings.

Back up all projects, and Restore from a backup

Where: Settings → Project files → Back up all projects; Settings → Project files → Restore from a backup.

Back up all projects writes every design and every piece in your library, pictures, progress, photos and notes included, to one .ccbackup file in Documents → Cross Count, named after the day (“Cross-Count-backup-2026-09-19.ccbackup”); a second backup on the same day is named “…-2” rather than replacing the first. A library of fifty projects is a few hundred megabytes and takes about twenty seconds; while it packs, a line under the Project files buttons reads “Packing every project…” and both buttons wait. Then a toast says where it went: “Backed up as Cross-Count-backup-2026-09-19.ccbackup in Documents/Cross Count, on this phone — copy it to a computer or Google Drive to keep it safe”. The file is only on this phone, and the card says so: copy it out, or it is lost with the phone. With nothing in the library yet, it says “Nothing to back up yet”.

Restore from a backup opens the phone’s file picker for a .ccbackup and brings in every project in it that is not already in your library. A project already here is left as it is, never overwritten by an older copy, so restoring the same file twice does no harm; a backup made on one phone restores onto a new one with everything in place. The line under the button says how far it has got: “Bringing your projects back…” while the file is read, then “Bringing back 12 of 49…”. The app still answers you while they come in; leave Settings and a message says how many are back so far, and closing the app before the end asks first (restoring the same backup again brings back the rest). At the end, a toast says how many were restored, how many were already here, and how many (if any) could not be read, and if you are still on Settings you are taken back to Home.

Each project inside the backup is an ordinary .ccdesign or .ccwork, checked from end to end before it is added, as Open a project file checks.

See also: .ccdesign and .ccwork files, what leaves the phone, Settings.

Where things live, and what leaves the phone

Everything happens on the phone. The app asks for no internet permission, so nothing you make is sent to us; there is no account and no analytics. It asks for the camera and your photo library, to choose or take a picture. Exports and project files go to Documents → Cross Count, which any file manager can see.

Android’s own backup can include the app, and your projects live inside it; that is Android’s setting to turn off, not the app’s.

See also: It saves itself, Export.

The Settings screen

Where: Settings, top right on Home.

• Text size: Large text makes the app’s own text half again as big, including the numbers along the chart’s edges; the layout wraps and scrolls to keep everything reachable. Printed pages do not change.
• Room for the chart: Bars slide away on the Design screen (off by default). Dragging or zooming the chart on the Design screen then hides the bars, unless a settings card is open; Show bars brings them back. On the WIP screen the bars stay until you tap Hide. See Hide and Show bars.
• How much do you want to see?: Basic or Advanced. See the two modes.
• Sound: Sounds on or off. Every sound doubles something already shown on screen, so nothing is lost with them off.
• Project files: Open a project file, Back up all projects and Restore from a backup. See project files and backup.
• About: what the app is, in a paragraph.

See also: Basic and Advanced, bars that slide away, project files.

If something looks wrong

The colors look brighter than the photo.

Floss is duller than a screen, so the app adds a little color on purpose. Turn it down under Design → Light → Color (Advanced), or switch off Balance the light for me.

The chart is full of single stitches.

Raise Design → Tidy → Fewer lone stitches. If a face loses its eyes, switch on Protect small details. Photographic blending makes the most lone stitches; None is right for almost every picture.

The background did not come off, or too much did.

Remove the background works from the edges inward in the background’s own colors. A stem or a tail that runs off the edge is left alone, but a subject that fills much of the edge, or that shares a color with the wall, confuses it. Frame tighter, or leave it off and use the eraser on the squares you do not want.

I cannot mark anything.

Choose a thread first. Marking only ticks the thread in your needle. A finished piece cannot be marked until you Reopen it.

The piece came out the wrong size.

Size is set in inches under Fabric, and the count of the cloth decides the stitches. Check the count matches the cloth you bought; a 14 count chart on 18 count cloth comes out a quarter smaller.

My finger moves the chart instead of drawing.

No tool is armed. Tap the Pencil, Backstitch, Erase or Mark chip; the lit chip is the one in your hand.

The bars have disappeared.

You tapped Hide, or, on a design, Bars slide away on the Design screen is on and you moved the chart. Tap the Show bars pill in the top corner; the switch is under Settings → Room for the chart.

Pattern Keeper cannot read my PDF.

Use the Pattern Keeper choice on the Export screen. The ordinary PDF is a picture of the chart; the Pattern Keeper one carries the symbols as text.

The printed squares are tiny.

The PDF was printed “fit to page”. Print at 100%.

I have a new phone.

On the old one, Settings → Project files → Back up all projects, then copy the .ccbackup out of Documents → Cross Count to a computer or Google Drive. On the new one, install the app and Restore from a backup. Every design and piece arrives with its progress and photos; see backup.

A painted square keeps disappearing.

If the chart already uses all 67 symbols, a new color cannot be given one and is left out; the app says so. Paint in a color the chart already has (the picker’s In this chart row), or lower the color count.

See also: the quick reference, the glossary.

Every control, where it lives, what it does

See also: Troubleshooting, the glossary.

Words the app uses

Aida, evenweave, linen

Cross stitch cloths. Aida is woven in blocks, one stitch per block. Evenweave and linen are woven thread by thread and usually stitched over two threads.

Count

Threads (or Aida blocks) per inch of cloth. Higher is finer: 14 count is the common beginner’s cloth, 18 count gives a smaller, more detailed piece from the same chart.

Over two, over one

On evenweave, stitching each cross over two threads of the cloth (the usual way) or over one (twice as fine). 28 count over two makes 14 stitches to the inch.

DMC

The maker of the stranded cotton floss most charts use; each shade has a number. The app charts in all 489 current DMC shades.

Skein

One bundle of floss as sold: about 8 meters of six-strand cotton.

Strands

How many of the six strands you stitch with. Two on 14 count is typical; the thread list’s Strands setting changes the skein arithmetic.

Full cross, backstitch

A full cross is one X in one square. Backstitch is a straight line stitched hole to hole, used for outlines and detail. The app charts only these two: no fractional stitches or French knots.

Symbol

The mark printed in a square to say which thread it is. The app has 67, never two the same in one chart.

Design, work, portfolio

A design is a chart that can still change. A work is a frozen copy being stitched, with its progress. The portfolio holds finished works.

Lone stitch

A single square of a color with none of the same color beside it: a thread change for one cross. Tidy removes them.

Bare cloth

A square left unstitched on purpose, shown blank on the chart.

Sheet

One printed page of the chart at stitching scale: 50 squares by 60, with three squares repeated on every join, and a line underneath naming the chart, the sheet’s number and the columns and rows it holds.

See also: Step 2: your cloth, the thread list, the quick reference.