Flossgrid · Lifestyle · iPhone
A chart with real DMC numbers, the skeins you need to buy, the finished size in inches and the hours it will take. Then it holds your place, square by square, while you stitch.
Free up to 10,000 stitches. $44.99 once, or $19.99 a year.
The picture on screen looks lovely. Then you print it and find 124 squares that are one stitch of one colour, sitting on their own in the middle of a sky, and 29 numbers on the shopping list, and no idea whether that is four skeins or forty. The maths that decides whether a chart is pleasant to work is not the colour matching. It is how many isolated stitches survive, how long a run of one thread you get before you have to change, and what all of that costs in thread and in evenings. Flossgrid does that arithmetic out loud. Ask the same photo for twelve colours instead of twenty-nine and it tells you the isolated stitches drop from 124 to 25, the shopping list drops from 30 skeins to 19, and the work goes up by five hours, because tone now comes from double crosses instead of from another number.
What it does
Every change reruns the whole chart, not just the picture. Colours, fabric count, strands, stitch types: move any of them and the stitch count, the skeins, the finished inches and the hours all move with it, in front of you, before you commit to anything.
A DMC skein is 8 metres of six-strand floss, so at two strands you get about 24 usable metres. Flossgrid works out the length each colour actually needs on your fabric count and rounds up per colour, then subtracts what is already in your stash.
Six steps from a single number: nothing, a seed stitch, a line, a half cross, a full cross, a Smyrna. Density does the shading instead of a second colour. On a golden retriever portrait that is 9 skeins of DMC 310 and no confetti at all.
Tell it what is in the drawer and it will match the photo to those numbers only. The same portrait built from nine numbers off a shelf comes to 16 skeins, 12 isolated stitches, and nothing to buy before you start.
Hold a ruler against the garment, match the on-screen one to it, and Flossgrid has the scale. Waste canvas is worked over two of its threads, so 14 count gives 7 stitches to the inch and a 3.6 mm cross. It also asks what the garment is made of and answers the stabiliser question.
Sections, a run of squares filled by dragging, threads parked mid-row so you can pick one up again, and a note about which colour you were on. Stopping in the middle of a row is the normal way to stitch, not an edge case.
How it goes
Say how many inches you want it and what fabric you are on. It answers with the grid, the stitch count and the piece of aida to cut, including the margin.
All of DMC, only what you own, a set you pick by hand, or one colour. The isolated stitches, the skeins and the hours change with each one.
Eight letter pages with overlap for a 140 by 112 chart, in colour or black and white symbols. Or leave the paper out of it and mark squares on screen.
What costs money
Free, up to 10,000 stitches
Pro · $44.99 a year
No trial, because the free tier is the whole app rather than a teaser. Nothing is taken away if a subscription ends: existing charts, progress, parked threads and your stash all stay exactly as they are.
FAQ
It can turn any photo into a chart. Whether that chart is worth stitching depends mostly on the photo. A face at arm's length with clear light works. A group shot where each head is 40 pixels across does not, because a stitch cannot hold detail smaller than itself. Flossgrid checks this before you spend anything: for a 140 by 112 chart it wants at least 980 by 784 pixels inside the crop, and it says so rather than quietly producing mush.
Fewer than you think. On a golden retriever portrait, 29 colours left 124 single stitches stranded on their own, most of them in the blurred background. Twelve colours left 25. The picture on screen looked slightly flatter and the chart was far easier to work. The one place more colours genuinely pay is a face, where the skin needs the steps to be small.
Yes, in skeins, per number. It measures the thread each colour needs at your fabric count and strand count, divides by the 24 usable metres in a skein at two strands, and rounds up. Then it takes off what your stash already covers. The example above needs 30 skeins across 29 numbers when built from the full DMC range, and 16 when built from nine numbers already in the drawer.
That is the part of Flossgrid that does not exist in the other pattern makers. You give it one real measurement off the garment, matched against a ruler on screen, and it has the scale for everything after that. Then you set the waste canvas count and whether you are working over one thread or two. Over two, 14 count canvas gives 7 stitches to the inch and a cross 3.6 mm across, which on the worked example comes to 39 by 31 squares, 12 colours and about two hours.
The size of the chart, and nothing else. Up to 10,000 stitches, which is 100 by 100 or any other shape with the same area, everything works: every palette mode, every stitch type, printing, PDF export, the stash, backup, the garment lessons. Above that you pay once at $44.99 or subscribe at $19.99 a year. There is no trial because there is nothing to trial: the free tier is the whole app on a smaller canvas.
They stay. Every chart you built keeps opening at full size, your progress stays marked, your parked threads stay parked and your stash is untouched. What stops is building new charts above the free limit. Losing work you have already put forty hours into because a subscription lapsed would be indefensible, so it does not happen.
No. Everything runs on the phone: the colour matching, the dithering, the skein arithmetic, the PDF. There is no account to make and nowhere for the picture to be sent. Moving your work to another device is done with a backup file you save and open yourself, which also means a backup is a real backup rather than a mirror of whatever went wrong last.
No, but you can. Printing gives you the chart across eight letter or A4 pages with an overlap so the joins line up, plus a legend page, in colour or in black and white symbols. Squares are never allowed below 4 mm on paper, which is the point where counting rows stops working. If you would rather not print, the stitching screen shows one section at a time and marks off what you have done.
Flossgrid runs on iOS 26.0 and later. No account and no server of ours. Your photos, charts and stash live on the phone, and the backup that moves them to a new one is a file you hold onto yourself.
Flossgrid is coming to the App StoreFree up to 10,000 stitches. $44.99 once, or $19.99 a year.