Last week we went over the best places to get free cross stitch patterns and we had a great response, but a lot of people were left asking “what about alphabets?
In a world where cross stitch generators are getting easier and easier to use, people are more often turning to making their own patterns. This, coupled with the rise of snarky stitching and phrase-based patterns often leads to people wanting to make text-based patterns. But unless you’re a secret font designer, people are left looking for alphabets and fonts they can use. So today, we round up where to get the best cross stitch alphabets for free, and paid.
Lord Libidan – Free
Yes, that’s right, we offer free cross stitch alphabets! In fact, 53 of them, in a range of sizes and styles to hopefully help you make an awesome pattern! But this post isn’t about what we offer, but about others, so let’s move on to other resources!
Online Generators – Free/Paid
The first place I would personally look are online cross stitch font generators. These awesome little tools allow you to search their font libraries, select a font, and type your words. They do all the work of making the pattern. They all have free and paid options, but if you intend to make loads of patterns, getting a subscription is a great idea.
There are two big ones out there to check out:
CrosStitch.com – Free & Paid
By far the largest is CrossStitch.com’s caption generator, with over 90 patterns and regular updates to add more. Only 6 are free, but at $12 for a year’s access, they’re a great resource.
StitchPoint.com – Free
Another option is StitchPoint.com’s offering, which is just as good but free. The downside is they only offer 7 patterns, so you’re a lot more limited.
Pinterest – Free
But what about something free I hear you say! Well, that’s where Pinterest comes in. Over the last few decades many cross stitch blogs, forums and designers have offered free cross stitch alphabets. These tend to disappear when the blogs/websites stop updating, but thanks to Pinterest, they’re all recorded to everyone to use. You can find specific boards purely saving cross stitch alphabets, or just go searching to find thousands of them for free.
Etsy – Paid
Sadly, whilst Pinterest does have a wealth of free patterns, sometimes they aren’t great quality patterns. This is where websites such as Etsy come in. Many people have lambasted Etsy in the past for its cross stitch copyright infringement, however, when it comes to cross stitch alphabets you’re free of copyright issues (by and large).
Thankfully the world’s cross stitch designers have put together cross stitch fonts on Etsy for you to browse and purchase. A quick search comes up with over 6000 different listings. What makes this even better is that most offer a pack of fonts for less than a few dollars, meaning you can stock up on as many fonts as you want for a low price.
Cross Stitch Generators – Paid
One of the most popular posts on this blog is our review of the best cross stitch software. Its also one of the main reasons we started writing this specific post, but many of the paid cross stitch generators offer free cross stitch fonts from within their apps. You do have to buy them in the first place to get access, but many cross stitchers have these already. You have to dig into the options to find them sometimes, but they all have them.
Our personal favorite is MacStitch and WinStitch’s font converter. It takes any font on your computer and converts it in real-time into a cross stitch pattern. This means you can find any font online you like the look of and it’ll do all the rest. Sometimes tiny fixes are needed, but for the most part, it’s fantastic. The whole cross stitch software is only $35, but the font converter is worth more than that in our eyes.
