Launched this week
NodeStitch
Make or follow crochet, knit and cross stitch patterns
3 followers
Make or follow crochet, knit and cross stitch patterns
3 followers
For crochet, knitting and cross stitch. Lay out patterns online with photos that number themselves and charts with written rows. On iPhone, start a pattern away from your computer, or follow your PDF patterns with a row counter.
Hi Product Hunt, I'm Ali. I'm a crochet designer, and my day job is data science.
In my job, anything repetitive makes me ask whether I can write code to do it for me. When I started writing patterns, I hit a lot of repetitive, manual steps. I started in PowerPoint and absolutely hated it. I made maybe two patterns there before I found Canva, which was better but still had me typing Round 1, Round 2, Round 3 by hand. Every time I added a photo, I had to renumber the rest and fix every line of the pattern that pointed to them. I'd also write out several versions of a pattern just to make sure the stitches lined up. When I went looking for software made for writing patterns, I couldn't find any.
So one day I just started building it. About eight or nine months later, NodeStitch solved most of the problems I had when I was making patterns.
On the website, designers lay out the whole pattern:
Photos number themselves, and references in your text follow when they move
Stitch counts get checked
Stitch charts for knitting and crochet write their own row instructions
You export a finished PDF, free with a small corner mark, or with no mark on Pro
Cross stitch too. Chart in DMC floss and every color gets its own symbol. The key lists each floss by number and name. Turn a photo into a chart matched to DMC colors, and print in black and white with symbols. On Pro, you can export a PDF that Pattern Keeper can read. I checked this by importing NodeStitch exports into Pattern Keeper, and it read every color.
The iPhone app is new this week, and you don't have to be a designer to use it. If you just want to follow a pattern, add any PDF to your library, whether it's yours, one you bought or a free one. Then:
Count rows with a big counter that remembers where you stopped
Count by voice: say "next" or "back"
Mark up the pattern with a pen, a highlighter and notes
Follow stitch charts row by row, cross stitch included
If you do design, the phone covers the part of the work that happens away from the computer. Photograph a notebook page or dictate rows as you work, and they land in your account ready to lay out on the website.
I'd love to hear from designers and makers. What's the most tedious part of writing a pattern, or of following one?