How to make a knitting colorwork chart from a photo

A knitting chart is a grid where each square is one stitch in one colour. Turning a picture into one is easy; getting a picture that still looks right once it’s knitted means accounting for one thing most converters ignore: knit stitches aren’t square.

Written by the developer of Gingham · Published 13 September 2026

Try it on your photo Gingham shows the whole pattern before you pay anything.

1. Why knit stitches aren’t square

Look at a stockinette swatch: each V is wider than it is tall. Gauge makes it measurable. At a common 20 stitches and 28 rows per 4 inches, one stitch is 1/5″ wide but only 1/7″ tall, a ratio of about 7:5.

That’s why a heart drawn on ordinary square graph paper knits up flattened, and a face looks squashed. Fix it in one of two ways:

• Chart on knitter’s graph paper (proportional cells), or with a tool that uses rectangular cells matching your gauge.
• Or on square paper, stretch the design vertically by about 1.4× before charting.

2. Size the chart from your gauge

Knit a swatch in the colourwork technique you’ll use. Stranded colourwork is usually tighter than plain stockinette. Rough starting widths:

• Hat band: a motif about 40 stitches wide, repeated around.
• Sweater yoke: a panel or repeat about 80 stitches wide.
• Blanket or pillow: a single picture 150 stitches wide or so.

3. Colours: fewer than you think

• Stranded (Fair Isle) traditionally uses two colours per row, carrying the unused one behind. A picture can change colours from row to row, but three or more in one row makes the fabric thick and the tension hard to keep even.
• Intarsia uses a separate bobbin for each area of colour and twists yarns where they meet. It handles more colours and big blocks, but tiny scattered details are painful in it.
• Most photo charts look best with 2–4 colours. Pick them for contrast, not realism: from a distance, knitting reads shapes, not shading.

A converter can hand you a chart with five colours in one row; it can’t knit it for you. Check each row of the chart against the technique you plan to use, and simplify rows that break it.

4. Floats and single stitches

In stranded knitting, the unused colour travels across the back as a float. Long floats snag fingers and pucker the fabric. The usual rule is to catch floats longer than about 5 stitches (some knitters say 7), twisting the carried yarn with the working yarn at the back.

Single stitches of one colour, the knitting version of confetti, are easy in stranded work but create long floats around them. Merge the ones that don’t add detail.

5. Reading a knitting chart

1. Start at the bottom right corner: row 1 is at the bottom.
2. Right-side rows (odd numbers when knitting flat) read right to left.
3. Wrong-side rows (even numbers) read left to right.
4. In the round, every row is a right-side row, so always read right to left.
5. One square is one stitch in the colour or symbol shown; the key says which yarn.

A written list of colour runs for each row, like “Row 12: 5 A, 3 C, 18 A”, is easier to follow than counting squares, especially on long rows.

6. Block the swatch before judging it

Colourwork often looks uneven straight off the needles. Wash and block the swatch the way you’ll treat the finished piece, then judge the picture and measure the gauge. Stitches relax and floats settle, and a design that looked rough often evens out.

A chart that knits up the right shape

Gingham’s knitting charts use 7:5 cells, so a photo keeps its proportions once it’s knitted. Choose a hat band, sweater yoke or blanket width, use up to 8 colors, and export a PDF with row-by-row color runs. Preview the whole chart free before you pay anything.