From hand cross stitch embroidery chart to cross stitch fills
There are many cross-stitch chart resources available for hand embroidery.
If you have permission to use these charts, you can use the cross-stitch assistant to adapt them for machine embroidery.
The results of the various steps in this tutorial can be found in this file:
The starting image (left) is from Muster altdeutscher Leinenstickerei : IV published in Berlin in 1888. This image is now public domain.
Start by using the cross stitch assistant (with no objects selected) to display the grid at the desired size (2 mm in the example file). The next step is to resize the image and position it so that each square of the original image corresponds to a cell on the displayed grid.
Once the image is correctly sized and positioned, use the cross stitch assistant again to convert the image into cross stitch fills.
Note that a rectangle has been used as a clipping path to confine the image strictly to the grid.
The most important thing is that the image must be positioned very precisely relative to the grid, the image grid must be perfectly horizontal, and the cells must align flawlessly.
For very large designs or slightly distorted images, it may be helpful to use clipping paths to work on smaller areas.
Once the image is in place, simply use the cross stitch assistant to convert the image.
For this type of image, significantly increasing the contrast and brightness is a good idea.
Also note that you need to request two colors, as the background color must be taken into account.
The final result has five jumps, which are unavoidable since the image is actually in six parts.
Are there more modern chart resources available online? Yes, but the vast majority are charts intended for personal use only, which prevents their use here.
If you have a chart in PDF format, consider opening it with Inkscape (you can limit the import to a single page). You can also choose not to import the text, and sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find you can remove many unnecessary elements from the file.