Can You Use a Cross Stitch Pattern for Diamond Painting?

Daimond painting or crystal art as it’s sometimes called is a fairly new craft but has a lot of similarities with cross stitch. I recently tried a diamond painting kit and I loved the easy way you could produce a design. It got me thinking could I use my own cross stitch pattern for diamond painting?

Understanding the Art of Cross Stitch and Diamond Painting

At a very basic level cross stitch is an embroidery design created on grid fabric made up of small crosses, which makes it very similar to diamond painting.

They become different once you start using things like half stitches, fractionals and back stitches in cross stitch.

The Basics: Exploring the Materials and Tools Required for Cross Stitch and Diamond Painting

The basic materials you need for cross stitch are:

aida fabric
needle
embroidery floss
a counted cross stitch chart to follow

The basics you need for Diamond painting are:

Dimond drills (small flat sided shapes that come in a variety of colours and either round or sqaure shaped)
A dimond painting pen tool
Wax to keep the pen sticky
a tray
A pre-printed design

Adapting a Cross Stitch Pattern for Diamond Painting: Is it Possible?

Yes it is completely possible to convert a cross stitch pattern to a diamond painting but there are a few things you need to check first:

Is it a full coverage design?
Does it use only full count stitches? You want to avoid half stitches, fractionals and backstitch
Can you get the correct colours in drills?

I would recommend buying square drills and these ones on Amazon match to DMC colours which are my choice for designing cross stitch patterns

Tips and Tricks for Successful Diamond Painting with a Cross Stitch Pattern

If you wanted to use a printed cross stitch pattern as your design based and make your own custom sticky canvas, you would print out the pattern ensuring the squares were 2.5mm x 2.5mm which is the size of a square drill and then cover the design with a double sided adhesive sheet. This will be the closest to using a pre-printed kit and means you are less likely to go wrong when following the chart.

Alternatively, you can buy sticky canvas and then follow a pattern just like you would counted cross stitch. It’s worth noting that a 10 x 10 square on 14 count aida would be 0.71” and a 10 x 10 square in square drills would be 0.98”

So you would need to calculate you canvas size correctly.

Cross Stitch vs. Diamond Painting: Which One is Easier for Beginners?

Personally I think both cross stitch and diamond painting are great beginner friendly crafts. Simple to pick up. The tools and materials are widely available and there are plenty of free patterns you can choose from to get started.

Why not browse my pattern library to see if you like the look of one of my free charts.