X Stitch for Windows is an excellent program for all avid cross stitchers. For those who love doing cross stitch, but have problems creating their own designs, this program is a must and for those users who find the designing an integral part of the hobby, the programs ease of use makes it invaluable.

Graphics images are imported into the program using the Windows Clipboard or you can import text from a paint program such as Windows Paintbrush using any available Windows font. The software then translates your grpahics or text into stitches. Each pixel is converted into a full cross stitch and colours are added to your paleete for each colour in the graphics image. it is that simple.

The colour of the background fabric is white by default, but may be changed to any cutom colour, whilst sizing can be as large as 640 x 640 stitches. Up to 256 colours may be used in a pattern and colour names may be up to 31 characters long.

After you have imported your picture, you simply replace each of the colours with one of the 360 DMC colours of your chice. The DMC Corporation is a major producer of embroidery floss and the 360 colours reflect their standard colour range. In addition to these colours, X Stitch for Windows allows you to select custom colours from a paleete of over 16 million - depending on your computer's capabilities.

X Stitch for Windows also includes tools which allow you to flip, rotate, mirror, copy or cut selected areas of your pattern. Eight different stitch types are supported each having its own symbol and interchanging between them is a mere mouse click away.

Printing in black and white produces your pattern in standard symbol mode. However, colour printers enable you to produce patterns reflecting the finished stitches and the symbols in colour.