One of my favorite things about a tapestry design is that the graph is its own little piece of pixel art. You can create it with yarn, thread, beads, or any craft where each square represents one small unit.
Pumpkin Tapestry 1 started as an orange-and-charcoal chart made for back-and-forth half double crochet. But the grid can also be a starting point for a whole collection of other projects.
Tapestry crochet
The full pattern, turn-by-turn instructions, and counted color runs on this website are specifically written for HDC tapestry crochet. This version works 36 stitches across and follows the graph from the bottom up. Because crochet stitches have their own height-to-width ratio, make a swatch if you want particular proportions.
Knitting colorwork
For knitting, treat the squares as stitch positions in a colorwork chart. Decide whether you'll knit flat or in the round, establish how you'll read right-side and wrong-side rows, and swatch before making anything large. Knitted stitches may have different proportions from HDC, so the motif's shape or finished measurements can change.
Cross-stitch and beadwork
Each square can represent a cross-stitch or bead, but your size depends on fabric count, bead size and layout. You may want to replace the yarn colors with thread or bead colors that match the design.
Diamond painting and other pixel makes
The graphic can serve as a creative reference for other gridded crafts too. You'll need appropriate materials, a compatible canvas or base, and your own color matching. A crochet PDF isn't automatically a diamond-painting kit or ready-to-print cross-stitch symbol pattern.
Why I built this reader
I wanted the pixel art to be the fun part. The page-turning photos and big colored number strips make it easier to work through a design without constantly losing your place. No matter what you make, the basic idea is the same: take the picture one square—or one stitch—at a time.
Try it with Pumpkin Tapestry 1
See the original progress photographs and jump to the exact color-run counts in the interactive flipbook. You can return to the row you were working on whenever you're ready.
Open the interactive pattern →