I am just a fellow stitcher, but perhaps I can help. I doubt that you will be able to find the same pattern in both black anmd white. Multiple page pattern can be very intimidating at first,but once you figure them out, they are not any harder, just take longer than other projects. As I said, I am not an ECS employee, but a fellow stitcher. There are lots of great folks on this site and we will be glad to help you with any advice you need if you choose to work on this project. Linda

Hello,

Unfortunately, about 90% of the designs these days will printed in black and white symbols. The cost of printing in color is really high and majority of designers, publishers and distributors can't really afford to print designs in color so that's why they will be in black and white. There are very few designs on our website that are printed in color and if they are, that information will be listed in the items description that is located to the right of the picture of the product.

But like lkgraham stated in their post, the group of people on this message board are extremely helpful and can give lots of helpful tips and advice for any issues that you may have :)

~Kristi @ ECS

Artecy patterns are wonderful. The symbols are much clearer in black and white than they would be in color. They are very popular with members of this Chat.

This might be your first experience with a very large pattern. Did you realize that the finished project will be 21 x 15 inches? Kind of impossible to print leaflet style. I imagine your original purchase is about the same size.

Make copies of the original so you can mark off the areas as you stitch. Keep the original copy in a safe place in case you need it.

Welcome to this Chat board.

HAVE A STITCHING DAY

In my experience, multi-page charts have good instructions on where the parts of the puzzle connect - often with a grid to guide you. You might find shaded areas that help you understand conncections

My advice is to make a copy of each page - or portion of the chart - and join them with tape or glue. This will give you the "big picture." (FYI, under copyright laws, it seems making a copy for this type of personal use is quite different than copying and re-selling, a no-no that hurts the designer).

I hope this helps, and just try some hints to see how they help you. It's all about how you approach spatial relationships, I suppose.

You can work this out!

Lynn

I have to add that when you are using a large selection of threads, color charts don't really help. Set up your floss cards based on symbols before you start, and expect to make a few mistakes if distracted by life.

L

I agree with Nancy G. I think patterns are much easier to follow when they're in black and white. I have one in color at the moment and I'm having trouble figuring out which color is which because I can't see the symbols on two similar colors. I was a bit concerned when I received my first pattern with many pages. I took it to a printer and had them enlarge each page and then I looked at the directions for putting them together and I assembled the enlarged pages, taping them together with Scotch Tape. I could fold the pattern as I went and I filled in the squares on that pattern with a red Sharpie Pen. (Put a white page in-between so the ink doesn't go through the pattern) I find that system works well for me. Just jump in and go with the pattern you have. Since you love it, you'll do just fine.

I did exactly what Senior Stitcher did and it worked just fine. Had a little problem getting a shop to copy pattern for
me but finally found a place that would.

For black and white patterns, I get out my colored pencils, mark the legend for each color name/number and its symbol with a pencil color. Then I color the chart according to my assigned colors from the legend. Although time consuming at first, I find this saves time once you begin actual stitching.

Caution: vary the colors, you won't want to assign all blue pencils to all blue symbols, reds to red, etc. That would become a nightmare to determine one from another.

Good luck with this pattern. It will be gorgeous!

I have taken multiple page black-and-white charts and, following the page numbers, laid the pages on the floor so I can stand and look down to see the Whole picture. Also, many Chart directions have a "page pictorial" ( squares that are labeled with a Page number ie. page 1-4 is the top row, then pages 5 -8 are the 2nd row, etc. ) There were a couple of Artecy patterns I bought that had this type of pictorial in the directions, but it was laid out incorrectly--- easy fix was to lay all the pages out on the floor and taking a "birds eye view" by standing and looking down to see the whole pattern laid out.

I learned a trick from someone here.

Use a yellow highlighter on the stitches that you want to stitch. Then when you are finished, colour them with a different highlighter.

Works so amazing for me (thanks to those that suggested it!)