Stitchly Reviews

Tried out the trial. Seemed good, decided to go ahead and pay the $30 but I made the purchase on my phone. When I wanted to download and “sign in” on my iPad, like you usually do for other apps…it turns out there is no “signing in”. You have to “restore” Stitchly by having your devices signed in using the same Apple ID you used for the original purchase. Mind you the iPad I use uses a different Apple ID. Okay, so I sign out and sign back in with my Apple ID (already inconvenient for me since it’s a shared family iPad) but it still doesn’t restore. It gives me instructions, which I have already followed but the restore is unsuccessful. Honestly a waste of money. Pretty sure there are better apps out there that allow you to SIGN IN into your account and not make it difficult to use Stitchly . Skip Stitchly. Not worth it. Waste of Money.

I wanted to get a sense of how to use Stitchly and if it could give me the results I want but way too many of the features in the demo are behind the developer’s paywall. I wasn’t able to try enough of it to decide if I liked it. Particularly I wish I could have at least previewed the higher resolution outputs. I would have been totally happy if Stitchly prevented me from saving the pattern or something but I do wish it would allow you to preview higher resolution patterns somehow.

Additionally I wish the developer printed an email address or something like that in the area to provide feedback. I don’t use the email client on my apple devices and so my only way to provide feedback about my experiences is to write a review here. I would have loved to send a more detailed feedback email instead of this review but Stitchly would need to give us another option besides trying to open your email client on the device.

I’d love to give Stitchly another try if there were more demo features to help me see if I can get the results I want. Thanks!

Stitchly is very good at what it does - ease of use, the ability to develop palates for similar patterns, importing previous patterns into new ones. There are some things that I wish it did, though. Specifically...

1) Importing an image into a blank pattern, so that we can create our own patterns, rather than using the automated method already in Stitchly - as if the image were a layer under the grid that we can “paint” over with our own color choices.

2) The ability to choose the size of the paint brush tool without having to zoom in and out of the pattern.

3) When importing a previous pattern, being able to move it in place before committing to keeping it in the new pattern would be helpful. That can sort of be done with the undo tool already, but that involves a lot of guess work about where to click.

4) Updated floss choices. DMC has come out with a lot of new floss choices (Etoille, Light Effects, etc.) - it would be nice to be able to include them in our patterns - or at least be able to change the pattern definitions before exporting. Otherwise, we have to change the names in Acrobat to make sure the patterns are accurate.

Again, Stitchly is wonderful and extremely helpful. A few additions would take it from great to indispensable.

Overall a pretty good app. I was looking for an alternative to stitch fiddle that I could use with my iPad. I love the ability to make my own pallets so I can use colors I already have. Some things could use improvements though. I'd like to be able to add and remove specific rows and columns. I'd also like a separate tool just for moving parts or the entire pattern around. I know you can move things with what's already there but it can be finicky. A separate tool dedicated just to moving things would be better especially when using an Apple Pencil. The price really is unbeatable since it's a one time purchase and the stitch fiddle subscription kept going up every year and didn't work well on my iPad.

I’m using Stitchly to design needlepoint canvases- other needlepoint designers like to use this so I was intrigued to try it! Overall, I would say it’s pretty good. I used the free version to design my first canvas, which worked but so many of the buttons and features were only available once you purchased the pay version that I finely bit the bullet and purchased it. The pro version is much easier and faster to use since you can use the paint brush versus dropping color into each individual square. I like being able to insert an image to use as inspiration or to trace. Stitchly a very basic design with just a view buttons and options which is nice but takes a little getting used to.

Things I wish Stitchly could do but either I haven’t figured out how to do it or it isn’t capable of doing:
- Enter a canvas size, rather than selecting a default square of (5x5, 12x12, etc). I would love to be able to make rectangle canvases or decide my own size (5x7, etc).
- I want a ruler on the grid to be able to accurately see how large of a design I am doing without having to count out the stitches since I typically don’t fill up the entire grid.
- The mirror function is great but if you want to flip the entire grid and have a mirror image you can’t because it can’t operate outside the canvas boundaries.
- It would be awesome if there was a shape button where you could draw a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, etc.

I’ve been playing around with Stitchly trying to get used to the features and started a new project today. You can tap each square as you stitch to mark them off but what I do t like is the square blanks out so you can’t keep track of the stitches you previously laid down. If the symbols were greyed out it would give better orientation and perspective of the pattern as you go. I like to do a modified cross country type attack to the pattern so I prefer to see the symbols I’ve previously stitched to make sure where I am because I don’t grid, I just freehand it.
Until using Stitchly for the first time I’ve always gone old school and used a pattern printed on paper so I can’t find any way to print the pattern in a magnified view, if it exists.
I think clearer instructions on how to use it would be helpful rather than just trial and error poking around.
I’ll let you know how the project turns out.

This does a wonderful job of converting a photo, and that is very useful and almost magical. However, there are so many aggravations: click any button to see what it does and you will have to clear the menu before you can do anything else. There is no compliance with standard Mac/iPhone functionality standards, e.g. ⌘S for save or ⌘Z for undo.

It is incredibly hard to edit any aspect like the size or dimensions of the pattern. Once you click done the first time, I have not found a way to decrease the number of colors in the pattern. There needs to be more user-friendly instructions and functionality. The operation is pretty counterintuitive.

In the long run, it seems to serve the overall purpose, but it is not enjoyable to do so.

I had been using a competitor’s app and wasn’t satisfied with it, especially since it seems the developer has abandoned it, so no needed fixes have been made.

Stitchly does what I need it to do regarding creating my own x-stitch designs. And for the price, it’s well worth it. However, a couple of improvements would earn it 5 stars:
1) The ability to move parts of the pattern around the “canvas”, like a click and drag. I needed to re-center my chart, but couldn’t do so, leading me to use the clumsy scissors feature to cut, paste, and rearrange my design.
2) The ability to delete colors from the pattern more easily. I tried the reverse arrows icon, which indicates you can swap colors, but it didn’t work for me. It would be great if the thread color could be deleted from the thread colors list and the corresponding colored stitches would then be deleted or replaced by a new color.

I have made several patterns with the paid version of Stitchly so far and have been really happy with the ease of use. I would give Stitchly a 5 star but the only feature I’m not happy with is the back stitch. In black and white charts, there is no way to distinguish between back stitches. Many of my patterns have multiple colors used for back stitching, but if I’m reading the black and white chart, all back stitches show as the same bold black line. Color charts are a little better in that the back stitch line is shown in the intended color, but if you have the line going over the same colored square, the line blends in. I have resorted to using a thread color a few shades darker just so that the back stitch lines are more distinguishable on the chart.

I do think the paid version is well worth the money if you are making many patterns. I sell mine on Etsy, and love the many features available. All my patterns are made from art I’ve drawn digitally and then imported in, and the auto pattern creation makes things simple and quick. I import the image, do some touch ups, add back stitching, and done!

I mainly use it for making cute little patterns and it has a ton of great features like copy/paste and color palettes that make it easy. The shopping list is also so convenient and I appreciate that there are many ways to share a pattern! Everything works well and never has given me an issue.

The only improvement I can think of is that when adding colors to a palette it would be nice to see the color too, not just the number. Or maybe a way to add/remove an entire color family at once (ie add all colors in the mahogany series to a palette at once instead of scouring through the list).

I’m a novice cross stitcher and completely new to creating my own patterns. Stitchly is very beginner friendly! I appreciated that there was no difficult learning curve to it and I could just dive right in and play around. I do have two suggestions I'd love to see in future versions. I’d like to be able to change the thickness of lines and the size of french knots, and I’d also like the ability to export and print patterns in Landscape mode instead of just Portrait (without having to rotate the finished pattern manually first). That way, wider patterns printed on a single page would be easier to see. Other than that, I am extremely happy with Stitchly.

Edit: the developer was exactly right, I had an issue with my Apple Pencil and it wasn’t working correctly. Now that I have that sorted out, Stitchly is perfect!

I love Stitchly — it’s really great for making your own patterns. I’m finally getting into pattern making after many years as a cross-stitcher, and Stitchly makes it really easy. There’s one thing missing that would be the 5th star for me, however: Apple Pencil capabilities. When I’m using Stitchly on my iPad, which I prefer, it would be so much easier to be able to use the Apple Pencil rather than my comparatively bulky, clumsy fingertip. It would be fantastic if you could add this functionality & would make this a five-star app for sure.

I have been using Stitchly for about a year now and it just keeps getting better. I like the flexibility of switching colors, symbols, swapping out background photos. I love how many different stitches it offers you. I love that it has all the different brand thread palates.
Could be improved- For the Convert a photo settings- be careful of your lighting of your photos. You might need to do some photoshop editing to brighten up photos before Import. Sometimes the chosen colors come out darker than I would like. Sometimes when I import an image, I have to tweak it a lot after using the internal conversion tools.
So I prefer to just draw it from an image myself. The draw it yourself option is so easy to use and you can move and resize your background image. I am constantly using the cut and copy tools, especially if I decide to expand my pattern on one edge. You can easily trace and move the entire image over and keep working.

I’ve used this app for over a year and I can definitely say it’s a great tool! I use it all the time for making cross stitch patterns and it’s definitely my favorite that I’ve tried on the iPad! One feature I would love though is the ability to treat regular stitches and backstitching as separate layers, it can be tricky when you need to change a color without touching the backstitching for instance. I would also appreciate split screen functionality on the iPad, because I like to work from many references it would make things much better if I could have them both on the screen without covering parts of my pattern. Either way, I love Stitchly and would recommend it to anyone looking to create their own patterns!

I LOVE Stitchly for designing Needlepoint (I don’t cross stitch) designs and letters. It is MUCH easier than any other app I have tried- and I’ve tried a bunch. I am completely mystified by the bad review I saw so I thought I would chime in. Being able to import photos and have them translated into a design is wonderful; with all sorts of tools to tweak Stitchly generated design, save as a photo and a PDF, # of stitches, # of colors, etc. Stitchly is WAAAAY better than any other I’ve tried- love it! I paid for the full version and it is worth every cent - I use it all the time!

Note for developer: Being able to choose a 5 or 10 stitch grid with darker line definitions for sections of 5-10 stitches would be enormously helpful. Also, an option to remove Stitchly logo would be VERY nice. Thanks for making such a great app AND providing updates on a regular basis!

Edit: the developer definitely listen to feed back. With this latest update they have (as far as I can tell, I haven’t had MUCH time to play with it) added everything I felt it was lacking. Raising my rating to reflect the updates!

It’s a decent app but I would like it to just do more. I would love it to have the option to add back stitching, knots, etc. I would also like the option to create a repeating pattern, something you could copy/paste/ pick up and move around the pattern to create boarders. Also to be able to create a full pattern, ie. image plus text or boarder rather than having to create multiple patterns or starting completely from scratch. I’m currently converting an image on one device then opening a blank pattern in a bigger size, recreating the image and adding boarders/text. Very very time consuming, but for $3.99 I’ll take what I can get.

I am loving this app. It works so well for creating patterns and counting stitches when I'm working on a piece.

The only thing I really think this app needs is a way to insert a photo into the "Design your own" pattern creator so that I could make the pattern by hand while referencing the picture. Import the picture with the grid on top, add an opacity control so I can decide how much of the pictures/stitches I want to see, so I could manually create the pattern. I use a lot of patterns/photographs I find online, but sometimes the stitches aren't very clear and I want to create a clean version for myself. The automated design creator is fine, but it has trouble picking up where the stitches are in a photograph, even with the adjustments. I'd rather be able to "trace" a photo manually with stitches.

Overall I love this app and I fully intend to keep using it.

I’ve tried a bunch of cross stitch pattern apps and programs, including some fairly expensive desktop programs and I always come back to this app. I love the interface, it’s easy to get started and very intuitive.

The patterns it outputs look very professional and are easy to read with several options for formatting. It currently has a size limit of 300x300 stitches which is fine for most projects I work on. I usually either work directly in Stitchly designing freehand, convert an image in Stitchly using its conversation tools, or if it’s something complicated I do the design in photoshop and import the .png into this app to make the file into a pattern and make thread color choices. All of those options work great.

I’m so impressed with Stitchly and frequently recommend it to people looking to start designing their own patterns. I’d give it more stars if I could.

I’ve made several patterns with this app thus far. I’m still relatively new to cross stitching, so I can’t compare it to lots of other xstitch programs, but it has served its purpose well. I’ve been using art/design/quilting software for decades and this app is one of the most user-friendly apps I’ve used. It doesn’t overcomplicate things. It’s so relaxing to chill on the couch and create patterns even if I end up not stitching them. Recently, the dev released a version that changed the way the paint brush tool works. It was a great change for iPhone users, but not iPad users. I wrote to them about the “bug” only to learn it was a feature. They listened to my feedback and immediately rolled back the update until they revisit its implementation. Seriously awesome dev. The kind I want to give my money to. A few suggestions (nice to have but not necessary): a tool to draw basic shapes + bezier curves and more fonts or the ability to import fonts.

Okay so…. When I first downloaded this I was TOTALLY unimpressed…. I didn’t think it did what I wanted…. I was SO wrong! I thought it only allowed you to do a colored graph… no symbols to differentiate the different colors and no way to really tell like different shades of green apart in the graph…. This is WRONG!! There ARE symbols! But you have to advance to the end for them to get added. You CAN view and print the pattern either as a colored pattern with symbols, OR as an old-school style black and white pattern with symbols only. So far it’s been AMAZING! And the customer support is even MORE AWESOME! He ALWAYS gets back to you within a day or so, give or take a few hours, and is always happy to help explain how something works or how to get it to do what you need it to. Truly an amazing APP and SO worth the $$!!!