The good and the bad with Custom Cross Stitch patterns based on photography.

At The Cross Stitch web site, the greater portion of our patterns are based on photography and personal pictures. This presents some unique challenges not only with the cross stitch patterns themselves, but with their presentation on the World Wide Web. The same photograph will be seen differently depending on the monitor and the computer settings. No matter what is done, it is difficult to accurately convey the true beauty of these photo based cross stitch patterns.

One solution that many people use to overcome this difficulty is to use the photographic overlay for their patterns when they present them online. While this is certainly more appealing on the net, we feel that it may lead to some sense of disappointment when someone orders a cross stitch or spends a large amount of time to complete it, expecting the results to come out looking just like a glossy photograph. We chose the other extreme with our photograph based cross stitch patterns and we will be following those up with pictures of completed patterns in short order.

In the meantime, we are using actual patterns without the overlay in order to give you a better idea what the finished cross stitch will look like. Unfortunately, this also leads to another problem online. When you view the patterns at anything less than full size, it appears to have a plaid pattern that does not show up in the final product. We are working hard at coming up with a compromise but in the meantime, please look for the photographs of our completed patterns that will be coming soon if you really want to see what you can expect.

Above and beyond the web presentation of photo based cross stitch patterns, there are many other issues that some of our friends and family have had difficulty with. In this section, we will be including a number of resourceful articles explaining difficulties that people have had with these patterns and what they have done to resolve the problems and end up with beautiful works of cross stitch art that they now have proudly framed and hanging on their walls.