Tutorial: Navigating a Multipage Chart

Most people begin cross stitching with a small pattern that they can finish quickly. These patterns usually fit on one page, or are printed on a larger folded sheet that unfolds so that you still have a single page to deal with. Most of our patterns are too large for any single sheet to be manageable, so we break them up into single letter-size pages. This can seem confusing at first, but here's how to find your way around our patterns.

1. You can visualize the picture cut up into pages the way you would cut up a pan of brownies. Each page is the same size in terms of the number of stitches across and down, but depending on the size of the picture, the pages on the right and the bottom may not be full.

2a. Regular print chart pages have 77 stitches going across and 95 stitches going down.

2b. Large print chart pages are 54 x 66 stitches. The symbols are larger so we don't get as many on a page. Notice also that we don't get as much of the picture on a page. This means that large print charts will have more pages than regular print charts.

3. All of our charts begin on page 3. (Pages 1 and 2 are reserved for the key and floss-color-to-symbol cross reference.) Page 4 is the page to the right of page 3, and we continue across the top of the picture until we reach its right side. In our example, that's page 5, and page 6 is the section of the picture that falls below page 3. Page numbers are found in the top left corner of the page.

4. To tell at a glance where any given page is in the chart, look for the map in the lower left corner of the page. It is a grid of small squares representing the layout of pages in the chart. The current page is darkened. For our 9 page chart, this shows that we are looking at the first page in the chart.

5. If you stitch beginning in a corner, you won't need to refer to the map often. You'll most likely start in the top left corner and work across the chart, paging forward one page at a time, until you come to the right side. When you are on the last page in a row of the chart, the map will have the last square in the row darkened, and the next page will have the first square in the next row darkened. At that point you return to the left side of your fabric. This map indicates the current page is the last in the top row (we are now looking at a larger chart).

6. Working from the center of the chart requires more frequent reference to the map. If you want to work this way, go to the center page of the chart (see Locating the First Stitch). The map shown is on the page containing the center of the chart. Let's work with this as an example. Look at the map and notice where we are in the grid.

6a. To go up from the center, look for the page whose map shows that it is in the same column in the grid as the center, but in the row above (marked in red). To go down from the center, look for the page whose map shows that it is in the same column in the grid as the center, but in the row below (marked in blue). It will be helpful to add grid lines on your fabric for the page boundaries as you come to them. (See Gridding.)

Another way to find the page is check the number of page you're on (20 is the center page in this example) and then subtract or add the number of pages in a row (7, so the page above the center is page 13). It's still a good idea to check the map to be sure you're where you think you are.

6b. To go right from the center, just go to the next page (blue). To go left from the center, just go back one page (red).

Use these principles to navigate through the chart no matter where you are.