Embroidery Effect
Hand it a photograph and it comes back stitched — every colour a whole thread from a count you set, every shape built out of stitches that lie in a direction, and the fabric showing between them. Two fields.
We made two examples, from two different photographs: a robin on pale linen and a tabby cat on dark wool. One is stitched light on light, the other light on dark, and both are built from rows of separate strands.
Look at it full size: you will see separate strands of a single colour, stitches that follow the form and fabric showing between them, with no gradients. Where two colours meet, the strands interlock instead of blending. The thread count you ask for is not kept, and the result uses many more colours. Treat that field as a guide to the ground and the palette, not as a real count for buying skeins or making a chart.
Generated for this library
Input
Threads nine, on natural unbleached linen
Stitch size about six stitches across the robin's eye
Photograph robin.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · the robin worked in thread
threads far more than the nine asked for - reducing
the result to nine colours still leaves an
average error of 16 per pixel
blending none - at full size the grey and the cream
interlock strand against strand rather than
fading into each other
direction ranks following the form: along the wing,
round the breast, down the branch
cloth the linen weave shows at every worked edge
and carries the background
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1How many thread colours, and the ground they are worked on
- 2How big a stitch is, measured against something in the picture
Embroidery Effect
What this makes
Hand it a photograph and it comes back stitched — every colour a whole thread from a count you set, every shape built out of stitches that lie in a direction, and the fabric showing between them. Two fields.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. Count the colours you actually need before naming the number — most subjects need fewer than you think.
- Look for a blend. Anywhere two colours fade into each other rather than meeting stitch against stitch, the run has painted instead of stitched.
- Check the stitch direction across a curved form. If every stitch runs the same way over the whole picture, it has been laid on rather than worked.
What you swap
- How many thread colours, and the ground they are worked on
- nine threads, on natural unbleached linen
- How big a stitch is, measured against something in the picture
- about six stitches across the robin's eye
Before it runs
- A photograph, attached to the message, whose subject reads as a few flat areas of colour. Anything whose whole character is a soft gradient will come back either flat or muddled.
- A thread count you have decided. It is a budget: nine threads means nine, and every tone in the picture has to be one of them.
- A stitch size measured against something visible. Millimetres mean nothing to a run with no ruler; six stitches across an eye is a size it can work to.
- Acceptance that fine detail becomes a step. A curve worked in thread is a staircase, and pretending otherwise is what makes the fake versions look printed.
When to reach for it
When something should look worked by hand in thread: a patch, a badge, a cover, a card, a label. Templates in this genre ask for an embroidery style and hand back a smoothly shaded painting with a stitch texture printed over it — blended colour, which is the one thing thread cannot do.
What changes
- One photograph in, one stitched panel out — thread, not a texture laid over a picture.
- Colour is limited to the number of threads you name, and no two are blended into a third.
- Every stitch lies in a direction, and the direction follows the form, which is what makes the light move across it.
- Curves come out as steps, because a stitch cannot be half a stitch.
- One image, no type, no hoop, no border, no craft table.
Pairs with
- Layered Paper Cut EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back built out of cut paper — a countable stack of flat layers, each throwing a shadow on the one behind it, and every curve rolled in one direction because that is all a sheet can do. Two fields.
- Origami EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back folded from a single square of paper — no cuts and nothing thrown away, so the paper the model does not use has to be tucked somewhere and it shows. Two fields.
- Backlit Silhouette EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back as a cut silhouette lit from behind — no interior anywhere, so every part that has to be recognised must reach the edge and show itself against the light. Two fields.