Introduction: How to Make Cross Stitch Pattern of Your Favorite Negative Film

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About: I like to make things more simple with easily available resources. My favorite quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a…

Want to turn one of your favorite negatives into Cross stitch pattern...?

There is a very simple way... you do not require any special equipment other than your Laptop & Digital camera or any specialized software other than " MS Paint", available with Windows OS and "Microsoft Picture Manager", which is part of MS Office. The left part of the picture shown above is the negative of photograph taken by me with a 35 mm SLR Camera, and the right part is the pattern created from the negative which you can use for Cross stitch.

This instructable will guide you on How to turn your favorite negative into cross stitch pattern easily with whatever you have...

All the resources you need are...

  • A film negative of any size you want to make cross stitch pattern
  • A Digital Camera or even a good mobile phone camera will do
  • Your Laptop LCD Screen
  • Paint program which is part of Windows operating System
  • Microsoft Picture manager, which is part of MS Office Program

Step 1: Photograph Your Negative on LCD Screen

Here, we will take photographs of the negative with a digital camera

  • Place your selected negative on the LCD screen of your Laptop or computer. Make sure the background is just plain with medium brightness.
  • Move your negative around the screen to find a suitable lighting combination
  • Set the picture size to highest possible. I have used a resolution of 4320 x 3240
  • Take few photographs of the negative with your Digital camera. Even you can use your mobile phone camera also. For beginners in photography, use Auto mode for good pictures

The picture you have taken is just an image of the negative, but it is pixelated due to the light source from the LCD screen.

Step 2: Invert Colors

  • Open photo of the negative image in MS Paint. You can right click the image and select the option "Open with" and then select MS Paint
  • In Ms Paint, select the required area in the negative and then right click on the image. At the bottom of the menu which appears, you can find the option "Invert Color"
  • Click "Invert Color" and you will have a positive image of the photograph.
  • Save the image with another name if you want to keep the negative also.

Step 3: Crop and Adjust Brightness & Contrast

  • Now open the positive image in Microsoft Picture manager
  • From the drop-down Picture menu, select "Crop" and then crop the unwanted area
  • You can find "Brightness and Contrast" in the same Picture menu
  • Click on that and adjust brightness and contrast as desired by you.

The last two pictures are before and after adjusting the Brightness and Contrast respectively. Look at the last picture and see the pattern for cross stitch. We will further crop this photograph to show only the baby.

Step 4: Crop to Show Baby Only

To make it simple, we will further crop the image to show baby only. Use the Microsoft Picture Manager to crop the photo as required

Step 5: Transfer Outline on Cloth

Here I have taken a color print-out of the baby image and laid on a 14 count Aida cloth. The enlarged image will show you the matching weave pattern. I have also transferred the outline of the baby over the Aida cloth. if you want to do your cross stitch, you can also turn the image into grey scale as shown here.

Have Fun...