Traces of Effort

I have a few kits, and so does a friend of mine, from Dimensions. This well-known cross-stitch kit producer is part and parcel with Simplicity - a sewing pattern maker - and part of a package of US-based crafting businesses including the 'Big 4' of sewing pattern producers that has been sold off. Simplicity does had EU/UK branches which should continue operations but Dimensions is notably sat under the US part of Simplicity.

While the current word of the street is that Dimensions will continue to operate, there's definitely some concern that this may change and may change suddenly and without much warning.

Because of this, r/crossstitch has had a few posts about getting the kits you want while you can, and also about getting the pdfs of kit charts.

Turns out, you can email Simplicity's support with proof of owning the entire kit and or having started work on a kit and they will send you a pdf of the kit's chart!

You can only get three pdfs a month and the proof of ownership is absolutely necessary. Still, definitely worth an email to contactus@simplicity.com.

Which I have sent! And so did that friend of mine, as I have 3 Dimensions kits and they have 2 others.

As a result, we now have 5 new pdfs to stitch with!

There's just one problem.

The pdfs are made from images of the charts, not the raw charts. This could be due to the software Dimensions use when drafting charts, as I suspect they have a custom software or use an older package that probably outputs as images and not 'typed' pdfs.

This means that the charts can't be read properly by Pattern Keeper, as it needs to read each individual symbol as a typed symbol rather than working on an image recognition basis.

The solution to this is both simple and rather laborious.

I take a chart, fiddle with the pdf to get it as a nice, even image that covers the whole chart, then put that image in the background of a Winstitch chart. Then, I set the palette up in Winstitch to have all the right colours and with approximately the same symbols, before I trace over the image of the chart with stitches, partial stitches and so on.

The backstitching, french knots etc. aren't really needed as PK can't read those anyway and so it's just the basic stitching that I need to deal with. If I have the time and it's not atrocious, I might include the backstitching and bits too so the resulting Winstitch chart if the complete package but it's not essential - I can still refer to the OG pdf after all!

Once it's all traced out, the last thing I have to do is hit File > PDF > ...for Pattern Keeper and Winstitch generates a lovely pdf that PK can read fully. It even now (thanks to a recent PK update) can handle partial stitches!

The numbering on partials is a bit off, as each 'corner' of every stitch is shown as a tiny symbol (i.e., a half stitch is two tiny symbols along the diagonal, a vertical half would be two tiny symbols one above the other etc.) and each symbol is counted as a separate stitch. This means if you've 100 half stitches, PK tells you that's 200 stitches. A small annoyance but it is there, in case that bothers anyone.

Back to the topic, after the tracing and export, PK can now read the remade pdf fully, and the Dimensions kit can be stitched using all the convenience of PK. For a lot of their bigger pieces, like the Japanese Garden or Silent Flight kits, there's a lot of confetti so being able to highlight your current colour in PK makes it a lot easier to find small clusters of a colour or even lone stitches off on the distance from the main sweep of that thread.

This means that I might actually make the Garden or S. Flight. I'm just a total convert to using PK for most charts so being able to get the pdfs and make PK-usable versions of these kits increases the likelihood of those kits getting made by like 100%.

The question now is, if Dimensions are under the US subsidiary of Simplicity and that's the part that's been sold off, will Dimensions cease operations at some point? Should I buy any of their kits that I like now? Do I even like any of there kits that much other than the ones I have already? Not that I have a shortage of patterns to work on, including The Ship.

Decisions, decisions and all of them wrong.

We'll see how this cookie crumbles, until then, I'll be tracing patterns for a long while. One Dimensions chart down, at least four more to go :p