Crosstela for iPhone and iPad
Stitch from the chart. Keep your place.
A free cross-stitch studio for iPhone and iPad. Import the charts you bought, mark stitches with a finger or Apple Pencil, isolate one colour, and see how far you've come — at whatever pace the evening allows.
Free. No account, no subscription, no ads, no tracking. iOS 18 or later.
Конвалія, one of the ten charts that come with the app — opened from the shelf and stitched in the thread view.
- FreeNo paid tier, nothing to unlock
- iPhone & iPadiOS 18 or later
- Apple PencilMarks, draws, hovers
- No accountNothing to sign up for
- Your iCloudSync into your own private database
Tracking
Mark it as you sew it.
The chart on the glass is the chart in your hands. Tap a stitch when it's done, and the app keeps every other question answered: which colour you're on, where its squares are, how many are left.
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Finger or Pencil
Tap a square to mark it. An Apple Pencil marks a whole run as you drag, and hovering it shows what the next touch will do before you commit. A finger pans and pinches by default; one switch makes it mark instead. Undo is always a tap away.
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Isolate one colour
Tap a thread and everything else fades. Every square of that one thread stands out on the cloth, and each unworked row shows how many squares before you move — the feature stitchers ask for by name.
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Park a needle
Leave a threaded needle mid-row and come back to exactly that square. Parked stitches carry a pin and hatch, not just a tint — nothing in the app means anything by colour alone. Print the parked-needle map and keep it by the hoop.
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Fence off a block
Fence off one block for this sitting and the chart takes marks only inside it. Each thread also shows how many separate areas it splits into, and tapping the number flies you to them — so confetti never surprises you.
Try it here
Isolate one colour.
This is Weekend Wren, another of the ten, being stitched in the browser from its own cell data. Tap a thread in the list and everything else fades — the same move as in the app.
Threads
tap one to isolate itThe rows count down as the stitches land — the same way the app's thread list does.
Goals
Point at what you're doing today.
Hold a block, or a colour, and say: this. The percentage in the bar shows that piece's count until it's finished or you take it off the list.
There is no clock on it, no deadline and no reminder, and finishing one does not start the next. Cross-stitch is not a sprint, and the app doesn't pretend otherwise. One goal is live at a time; the rest wait quietly in your list.
Statistics
A record of your evenings, not a quota.
Time stitched, stitches per day, a year at a glance, and how much of every thread is still to go.
The time is worked out from the marks you made, not from a stopwatch you have to remember to start, and the day rolls over at an hour you choose, for night stitchers. The finish estimate uses your own pace, says nothing at all until three active days are behind it, and calls itself what it is: a good estimate, not a promise.
And when a piece is done, watch it: every mark you made replays in about ten seconds, and you can save the film.
Two ways to look
The chart, or the cloth.
Work from symbols on a grid, or flip the same chart to thread on fabric and see what you're making. Drag the handle.
The finished preview draws every stitch as sewn, so you can judge a colour choice — or the fabric shade — before the first cross goes in.
Import
Bring the chart you bought.
Chart PDFs — including the layouts Pattern Maker, WinStitch and Cross Stitch Pro produce — read out of the file, not guessed off the pixels. Pattern Maker .xsd. OXS. Ursa .chart from MacStitch and WinStitch. A photo or scan of a paper chart opens as an overlay to track on.
An honest receipt
A chart file can carry more than any importer reads perfectly. When a file only partly reads, Crosstela says which rung it landed on and what is missing — before you start, not on row forty, and still months later from the chart's own menu. Nothing is imported silently wrong, and a multi-page PDF asks which pages are the chart instead of quietly keeping page one.
How it stitches
Before you thread a needle, a plain-language read of how the chart will stitch: how much of it is single scattered stitches, how the colours sit — real numbers, no jargon.
Your file stays yours, and it goes back out
The import happens on the device; your purchased chart is never uploaded. Export a printable PDF, a PDF for Pattern Keeper, OXS, pictures of the finished piece or the symbol chart, and the app's own .crosstela file.
Import receipt illustration
- Grid — 140 × 96 stitches read from the file.
- Legend — 7 threads, DMC codes matched to the catalogue.
- Backstitch — 236 segments, bound to their colours.
- Fabric — the file names no fabric colour, so none was assumed. Choose one when you open the chart.
Threads and fabric
Real threads, honestly labelled.
Mill catalogues by their own colour numbers. A thread has no single true colour on a screen, so every range says where its colour values came from — the maker's own published numbers, a sampled colour card, or borrowed on the maker's word — and where the origin isn't known, it says that too.
Catalogues by the mill's numbers
2,892 shades in nine ranges from five makers — DMC (stranded cotton, Pearl Cotton, Étoile, Diamant, Natura), Cosmo, Gamma, Peri and Sullivans — each thread under the code printed on its label, and the ranges sold where you are listed first. Convert a chart to another range and be told when two of the designer's shades would collapse into one, which is the thing that ruins a gradient.
A buy list in skeins
How many skeins of each thread the chart needs, counted from the stitches on it, the cloth count and the strands you'll use, with the assumptions written down. Tick off what you already own; take the rest to the shop.
52 fabric shades
Fifty-two shades from Zweigart, Permin and Access Commodities, by their catalogue numbers, or a colour of your own — so the cloth on the glass is the cloth in your hoop. A fabric calculator turns count and stitches into finished size and cut size.
Editor and photo
Draw your own.
A real editor, not a viewer: pencil with brush sizes, eraser, fill and gradient fill, shapes, select, recolour, eyedropper, live symmetry, text, auto-outline and layers — with backstitch, French knots, beads and quarter stitches as first-class marks.
The Pencil draws at the speed of your hand, and the editor's undo history is saved, so it is still there next launch. Turn a photograph into a chart, too: the conversion runs entirely on the device, and the picture never leaves it. And when you wonder how a stitch is made, a library of 113 stitches in eleven families shows the needle's path.
Privacy
Nothing reaches us.
There is no account to create, no analytics, no crash reporter and no advertising. Your charts and your marks live on your device and, if you turn it on, in your own iCloud.
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data collected
The app's privacy manifest declares no collected data and no tracking, and there is no third-party code inside it to disagree.
Your iCloud
is the only sync
Sync writes to the private database Apple keeps for your account. We can't read it, and there is no server of ours in between.
On device
photo to chart
A photograph becomes a chart on your iPad or iPhone. It is never uploaded, and the app makes no network connection of its own.
The full privacy policy is short, because there is little to say.
Price
Free. Full stop.
No paid tier, no unlock, nothing to restore, and no plan to add one. Every feature on this page is in the app you download, because it is the only app there is.
Alongside the others
Where it stands.
The niche has good tools in it. This is where Crosstela differs, as checked on 2 September 2026.
| Crosstela | Markup R-XP | Stitchmate | Cross Stitch Saga | Pattern Keeper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs as | Native iPhone and iPad app | iPhone, iPad and Android app | Website; a desktop app is announced | iPhone and iPad app | Android app; iOS “in early development” |
| Price | Free, no paid tier | Two-week trial, then £14.99 + VAT a year | Free editor; PDF export from $3.99 a pattern, passes to $149 | $15.00 | $9.00 once |
| Tracks your stitching | Yes | Yes | No — exports for Pattern Keeper | Yes | Yes |
| Edits and designs charts | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Reads PDF charts | Yes, with a receipt of what was read | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Says what an import could not read | Yes — per file, kept with the chart | No | No | No | Lists supported designers |
| Says where each thread colour value came from | Yes, per range | No | No | No | No |
| Where your work syncs | Your own iCloud, private database | Backup and restore within one platform | Their cloud, with an account | Manual save to iCloud Drive or Files | Not stated |
| Account required | No | No | For sync and purchases | No | No |
Checked against each product's own website and App Store or Google Play listing on 2 September 2026; prices as printed there that day, in the currency they printed. Every one of these is a good tool with things Crosstela lacks — Stitchmate's forty-odd thread brands and export presets, Markup R-XP's years of tracking, Pattern Keeper's designer list. Product names belong to their owners. If something here is out of date, tell us and it will be corrected.
Free on the App Store.
For iPhone and iPad with iOS 18 or later. Ten original charts come with it, so there is something to stitch before you import your own.
Version 1.0 is with App Store review. The link goes live here the day it's approved.