How to turn a photo or picture into a crochet pattern

To turn a picture into a crochet pattern, put it into a chart maker, set the finished size and your tension, reduce it to a few yarn colours and choose C2C, rows or tapestry. Bobble makes the chart in your browser and takes you through it in Make Mode, free. Pro adds the written rows in UK or US terms and every download. The rest of this guide is how to choose a picture that crochets well, and what to expect from the chart.

What “turning a photo into a pattern” actually means

A crochet pattern from a photo is just a colour-by-number grid. Each square on the grid is one stitch (or one block, in C2C), and the colour of the square tells you which yarn to pick up next. The clever bit isn’t the chart itself. It’s reducing thousands of photo colours down to a small handful of yarn shades that still look like the original picture when you stand back.

You don’t need to draw any of this by hand. Bobble does the colour reduction, the grid mapping and the row-by-row written instructions for you. The point of this guide is to make sure your input gives you a result you actually want to crochet.

Pick a picture that will crochet well

Not every picture translates well. Before you add one, look for:

• Strong shapes, simple background. A subject that fills most of the frame against a plain background reads much better at low resolution than a busy scene with twenty things going on.
• Clear contrast. If you squint at your photo and the subject blurs into the background, the chart will too. Pick something where light and dark areas are obvious. If the subject is close in tone to its background, raise Contrast in the “Look, for photos” section of the Advanced tab before you set the colours.
• Not too many colours. A close-up of a single flower beats a holiday landscape. The more colour variation in the photo, the harder it is to reduce down to a handful of yarn shades without it looking muddy.
• A shape that suits the piece. Bobble keeps your photo’s own shape, or crops it to the size you choose (a 40 × 40 cm cushion, a 75 × 100 cm baby blanket, a 120 × 150 cm throw, a 50 × 70 cm wall hanging, or your own), and never stretches it. Pick a picture whose subject still fits that shape.

Pet portraits, silhouettes, logos and bold graphic shapes chart well. Crowds, wide landscapes and photos taken in low light do not. For faces, see how to crochet a portrait from a photo.

How big to make it, and why your picture isn’t squashed

A crochet stitch is not square. In rows of DK on a 4 mm hook a typical tension is 18 stitches and 20 rows to 10 cm, so a chart that gave each pixel one stitch would come out squashed. Bobble works the rows out from your tension instead: a square photo 60 stitches across becomes a chart 60 stitches by 67 rows, which finishes at about 33 × 34 cm. Work a swatch, enter your own stitches and rows per 10 cm, and the grid, the finished size and the yarn follow it.

Charts run from 10 to 300 stitches or blocks each way. The same finished size holds very different detail in each method, at Bobble’s DK tension:

• a 40 × 40 cm cushion is 72 × 80 stitches in rows, or 16 × 16 blocks in C2C;
• a 75 × 100 cm baby blanket is 135 × 200 stitches in rows, or 30 × 40 blocks in C2C;
• a 120 × 150 cm throw is 216 × 300 stitches in rows, or 48 × 60 blocks in C2C.

More squares mean more detail and more hours. For other sizes, see the crochet blanket size guide.

Reduce the colours

This is the most important step and the one that catches first-timers out. A photo has millions of colours; a crochet chart needs maybe four to twelve. Bobble starts at 8 colours and lets you choose from 2 to 20, but always adjust the palette before you commit.

Start by trying the lowest number of colours that still looks like your subject. Six is a sweet spot for most photos. If your finished chart looks like a mess of confetti, you’ve got too many colours. If it looks like a flat blob, you’ve got too few, try adding one or two and see if the shape comes back.

Tap any swatch to nudge it towards a yarn you actually own. If you’ve got six skeins of Stylecraft Special DK in your stash, there’s no point letting the tool pick a colour you’ll never match, push the swatches towards what’s in your basket. (More on this in how to choose yarn colours from a photo.)

C2C, rows or tapestry: which suits your picture

All three work from the same chart. What changes is how each square becomes stitches:

• Rows of double crochet in UK terms (single crochet in US terms), worked back and forth, one stitch to a square. The sharpest picture, often called pixel crochet; best for cushion covers, wall hangings and detailed subjects.
• Corner-to-corner (C2C), worked diagonally from one corner in small blocks. Quicker, softer, and the usual choice for blankets. There’s a full breakdown in our C2C graphghan guide.
• Tapestry, the same stitch as rows with the colours you are not using carried inside the stitches. A firmer fabric that uses more yarn, best with four colours or fewer in a row. See the tapestry crochet pattern maker.

The method changes how much detail a size holds. A 40 cm cushion is 72 stitches across in rows but 16 blocks in C2C, so a detailed subject such as a face or a pet wants rows or tapestry, and C2C suits bold shapes at blanket size. Switching between the three keeps the chart but not the finished size: the same 72 × 80 grid is a cushion in rows and about 180 × 200 cm in C2C. Bobble also charts a bauble cover in rounds. For the full comparison, see pixel, C2C or tapestry crochet, and for choosing a tool, what to look for in a free crochet chart maker.

Can I get my pattern as a free PDF?

No, not on the free plan. The free plan gives you the chart and Make Mode, which takes you through it row by row on your phone or computer. A PDF with the chart and the written instructions together is part of Bobble Pro (£3.99 a month, cancel any time), for every chart, Bobble’s free designs included. The free designs are in the Gallery.

How to crochet the picture, row by row

For rows and tapestry, row 1 is the bottom row of the chart, read right to left, and each row after it goes the other way. For C2C, row 1 is the bottom-right square, and you work diagonally outward. Bobble writes out every row, and for rows and tapestry it starts with the foundation chain.

1. Use Make Mode, the follow-along row tracker. It shows one run of stitches at a time with its colour and count, moves on when you press Next, steps back with Undo, and remembers your place between sittings. It keeps the screen awake, and Bobble works offline once loaded.
2. If you have Pro, keep a printed copy as a backup: it prints a PDF of any chart, with the chart and the written rows side by side. There’s also a guide on how to read a crochet chart.

Bobble lists the metres and balls of each colour, with a 10% allowance for tension and the tails you weave in, matched to Stylecraft Special DK or Paintbox Simply DK. Buy a spare ball of the main colour, since dye lots vary.

Can I use any picture?

A photo you took or a picture you drew is yours to chart. Someone else’s photo, artwork or a well-known character usually needs the owner’s permission before you sell or share the pattern. When you publish to the Gallery, you confirm that you made the chart or have the right to publish it.

A few tips before you start

• Crochet a small swatch first to check your gauge. Your finished blanket size depends entirely on your hook and tension, not the chart dimensions.
• Wind small bobbins of each colour rather than working from full skeins, a 60-stitch row with five colour changes gets ugly fast otherwise.
• Weave ends as you go. Thirty colour changes saved up for the end is no-one’s idea of fun.
• If you don’t love the first chart, start over. The whole point of doing this in software is that it costs nothing to try a different photo, fewer colours, or a different palette.