Image to crochet pattern

How to turn a photo into a crochet pattern

1. Open the photo. Crop close to the subject first; a face, a pet or a logo on a plain background charts far better than a busy scene.
2. Pick the style. C2C for blankets worked in diagonal tiles, tapestry for single crochet worked in rows with the other colours carried inside, filet for one-colour lace from a dark-and-light picture.
3. Type your gauge. Crochet a swatch, count the stitches and rows (or C2C tiles) in 10 cm or 4 in, and type them with the finished width you want. Or set the grid size in stitches directly.
4. Choose the colours. 2 to 12; fewer colours mean fewer yarn changes. Tap a swatch to set the yarn colour you own, and raise “merge runs” to tidy lone stitches.
5. Crochet from the written rows. Tap the row you are on; the chart lights it and the page remembers it next time on this device. Download the PDF to work from paper.

Gauge decides the shape

Most free converters draw square cells, but a crochet stitch is seldom square. Width of one stitch = 10 cm ÷ stitches per 10 cm; height of one row = 10 cm ÷ rows per 10 cm. At 20 stitches and 24 rows per 10 cm a stitch is 5.0 mm wide and 4.2 mm tall: 1.2 times as wide as it is tall. Work a 60 × 60 square-cell chart at that gauge and it comes out 30 × 25 cm, not square. This page draws each cell at that 1.2 : 1 shape and picks 60 × 72 for a square picture, so the piece ends up the shape of the photo. C2C tiles are close to square, so one number (tiles per 10 cm) sets both directions.

How the rows are written

• C2C starts with one tile in the bottom-right corner. Row n is the diagonal n − 1 tiles from that corner, so a grid 5 wide and 3 tall has 5 + 3 − 1 = 7 rows of 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2 and 1 tiles. Each diagonal has two ends. The bottom end walks left along the bottom edge and the right end walks up the right edge; each end increases while it is on that edge and decreases once it turns the corner. On the 5 × 3 grid the right end reaches the top after row 3, so it decreases from row 4; the bottom end decreases from row 6. Rows 4 and 5 increase at one end and decrease at the other, so the tile count stays the same. Odd rows are written from the bottom end to the right end, even rows the other way.
• Tapestry: row 1 is the bottom row. Odd rows are right-side rows, read right to left; even rows are wrong-side rows, read left to right. Each row is its colour runs in that order, like Row 3 (RS, right to left): 4 A, 2 B, 6 A.
• Filet is one colour: a square is filled where the photo is darker than the threshold and open where it is lighter, read in the same right-to-left, left-to-right order: 3 open, 2 filled, 3 open.

Yarn per colour

Yarn = cells of that colour × yarn per cell, plus the spare percentage, rounded up to a whole metre and a whole yard. The starting figures are measured by other crocheters, both fetched when this page was built (2026-10-20) and kept with it in yarn-reference.json: a worsted C2C blanket of 53 × 75 = 3,975 tiles that takes 2,423 m (Capricorn Astrology C2C Blanket, gauge 7 tiles in 13 cm), which is 61 cm per tile; and 1.8 in (4.57 cm) per single crochet in worsted (Shiny Happy World, “How to knit or crochet using an exact amount of yardage”). Filet starts at three times the single crochet figure per square, which neither source states: it is a rough guess. Your own figure is better: unravel a 10-stitch swatch row, measure it, divide by 10, and type it in.

What it cannot do

• No mosaic crochet (overlay or inset). Those charts follow different rules about which colour can sit above which, and this page does not apply them.
• No amigurumi or shaped pieces. Every chart is a flat rectangle; there is no shaping, no rounds and no garment pieces.
• Yarn amounts are an estimate. Tension, hook size and the yarn itself all change them, and tapestry crochet carries the unused colours inside every stitch, so each colour runs through far more stitches than its count. Raise the spare percentage, and buy from one dye lot.
• Screen colours are not yarn colours. The swatches are the photo's colours on your screen; match them to real yarn in daylight, and tap a swatch to type the colour you own.
• Saved on this device only. The photo is kept in this browser's storage (IndexedDB) and the settings and row tracker in local storage, so they are not on your other devices. “Clear saved work” deletes all of it.

Questions

Is this image to crochet pattern converter free, and is my photo uploaded?

Free, with no sign-up. The photo is read by this page in your browser and never sent anywhere; you can switch off the network after the page loads and it still works.

How many tiles should a C2C blanket be?

Tiles = width × tiles per 10 cm ÷ 10. At the reference gauge of 5.4 tiles per 10 cm, a 100 cm wide throw is 54 tiles across; with a square photo it is 54 rows high too, and 54 + 54 − 1 = 107 diagonal rows. Grids up to 200 × 200 are allowed.

Can it make a filet crochet pattern from a picture?

Yes. Choose Filet and move the threshold until the motif reads clearly; dark parts become filled squares. Pictures with a strong outline and few mid-tones work best.

What size will the finished piece be?

The line above the chart says it, from the grid and your gauge: stitches across × stitch width by rows × row height. If you change hook or yarn, swatch again and type the new gauge.