Wanting to get your hands on a cross stitch pattern for a low cost, or even free is something we all feel. However, getting your hands on both a quality cross stitch pattern, but also a cross stitch pattern that isn’t copyrighted can be very hard when your budget is low. But that doesn’t mean its impossible. So today, we round up the best places to get free cross stitch patterns, and the places you should avoid.

Places To Get Free Patterns:

Finding free patterns really isn’t that hard on the internet, but finding quality free patterns is a different ball game. We reached out to our social media followers for their suggestions and we checked out the quality of the patterns ourselves to make sure they’re the best of the best.

DMC

Unlike many other suggestions on this list, we’re being very specific in the place to go here. DMC threads launched a section on their website about 2 years ago now with over 1000 free patterns. They’re a combination of DMC made patterns, designer collaborations, and paid patterns that they are now making available for free. They’re constantly adding more, and they range from small motifs to large cross stitch patterns.

Designers Websites

Slightly less specific is our suggestion to go to your favorite designers’ own websites. Whilst you can pick up a branded pattern from a whole host of retailers, designers often give out free patterns on their own websites. The reason for this is that they’re either too small for a chargeable pattern, or they just want to get people onto their website. We could list a whole raft of designers that choose to offer free patterns, but award-winning designers such as Caterpillar Cross Stitch and Tiny Modernist are on the list.
You do need to have a favorite designer for this to work, but if you don’t right now, you can search any of the retailers out there for patterns you like and look up the designer (they should always be listed).

Online Stores

Just because designers offer free patterns on their own websites, that doesn’t mean online stores don’t have free patterns as well though. Major retailers such as Heaven & Earth Designs have free patterns on their site. These patterns are to the same standard as their other patterns, but they have an agreement with the designer to offer them for free.
We should note though, that you need to make sure they’re a quality retailer.

Places To Avoid:

Sadly, for every great place to get free patterns, you can also find ten that are not so great.

Etsy

The first on our list is Etsy. Whilst we’ve spoken about Etsy in the past and how its a force for good in cross stitch that doesn’t mean its perfect. More often than not Etsy features copyrighted patterns for sale. However, a recent trend is charging a few cents for up to 20-30 patterns, effectively making them ‘almost’ free. These pattern packs are always filled with copyrighted patterns, so stay clear!

Pinterest

Another site with cross stitch pattern copyright issues is Pinterest. Whilst the site does offer many free patterns that are fine to use, it contains lots and lots of patterns that are direct copies of designers works, or in breach of copyright. However, we would say that you can find some great free cross stitch alphabets on the site!