In counted cross stitch what is gridding?

Question

I know what this means in reference to drawing you take a picture you are working on, copy it in black in white, take a ruler and grid out the picture in spaces (like in 1/4" increments, hence the ruler). Usually using a pencil lighter then the rest of the drawing in order to cover up the grid. then you grid out the paper you will be drawing on in spaces slighter larger spaces then you spaced the grid on photograph. Then you draw one space at a time.

My POINT IS how do you do something like that in counted cross stitch or is it in refernce to something different?

Answer 1

What you have described is just the way it works in cross stitch. Grid your picture as you have described, then fill in the colours using floss in as close a shade as you can find.

This takes some judgement, as a picture may have more than one shade in a given space. Use the colour than seems most dominant, and be prepared to change it if necessary to get things looking just right. In most cases, it will look fine if you use the most dominant, but doing eyes is very tricky. If you can, do eyes in 1/4 stitches with several colours to get as much detail as possible.

Answer 2

Gridding is also done when you have a large, complex picture to stitch and don't want to get hopelessly lost if you skip around. You use a contrasting thread and divide your fabric into 10x10 squares, which will match up with how your pattern is gridded.

If you're doing a cross stitch design, there are software programs that will automatically create the 10x10 grid for you. Or you can do it in Excel.

Answer 3

You can use it to make your own counted cross stitch pattern from any picture.
Make a grid over a (copy of) your picture and use the dominant colour in that square for the stitch.
That is the way the computer programs make patterns from photos.

As I do not do a lot of stitching I am not sure this is the only explanation.

Answer 4

http://treasuredtapestries.com/grid.html