My crochet designer

Review by eFreeware

Writing a crochet pattern down is one of the fiddlier parts of the craft. A chart has to show where each stitch sits, how the rows turn, and how a motif repeats, and doing that on squared paper means redrawing everything the moment a color or a count changes. That is the problem My crochet designer sets out to solve. It is an Android app from the developer langaler, listed under Art & Design, and its purpose is narrow and clear: drawing crochet patterns rather than teaching crochet.

The app is a paid download at $3.49, with no ads and no in-app purchases attached to it. It has been on Google Play since September 2017 and was last updated in December 2025, which suggests the developer is still tending to it. It carries an Everyone content rating, and the install figure sits at over 1,000, with a 3.7 average from 68 ratings. Those are modest numbers for a store this size, and they tell you this is a tool for a specific audience rather than a mass-market craft app.

What interests me most is that the app covers three ways of working: direct, circular and combined crochet. Plenty of chart makers handle flat, row-by-row work and stop there. Circular and combined patterns are where the geometry gets awkward, and building them by hand is where most people give up or fall back on a spreadsheet.

Who this chart-building tool is for

This is for the crocheter who designs, not the one who follows. If you write your own patterns, adapt motifs, or keep a notebook of ideas you want to chart properly before you pick up a hook, the app is built for exactly that job. The same goes for anyone who teaches or sells patterns and needs a clean diagram to hand over.

The element library is the part that makes that plausible. It includes a large selection of basic and complex knitting elements alongside elements for loin crochet, so the building blocks of a chart are already there rather than something you draw from scratch. For a designer working in more than one style, having those categories in one place matters more than any single feature.

I would not point a beginner here. The app assumes you already know what the symbols mean and how a pattern is constructed; it is a drawing surface, not a course. The help section does describe each knitting element, which is useful reference while you work, but it is a glossary rather than instruction. Someone still learning the basics will get more from following published patterns first.

Building and editing pattern elements

Each element in a chart can be handled on its own. The app lets you rotate it, mirror it, change its color and change its size individually, which is the difference between a chart that merely records a pattern and one you can rearrange as the idea develops. If a motif needs to face the other way, or a section needs to read in a different color, that is an edit rather than a redraw.

That per-element control is what I would expect to use most. Crochet charts are repetitive by nature, and the work is usually in the exceptions: the one stitch that turns a corner, the color change that marks a round. Being able to single out an element and adjust it without disturbing the rest of the field is the feature that saves the most time.

The field itself is designed for large schemes, so a full blanket or a wide circular doily does not have to be split across several pages. Background and cell pitch can both be changed, which affects how the finished chart reads on screen and in print. Adjusting the grid spacing is a small thing on its own, but it decides whether a dense chart stays legible when it is exported.

Rulers, notes and row numbering

Alignment is where hand-drawn charts usually fall apart. The app includes straight and circular rulers for placing rows and elements precisely, which is the kind of tool that matters more in circular work than in flat work. Keeping a round even, or spacing a repeat correctly around a center, is much harder to eyeball than to measure.

You can also add text notes and number the rows. Notes are useful for the instructions that do not fit into symbols, such as a hook size, a yarn weight or a reminder about how a round begins. Row numbering does the quieter job of making a finished chart readable to someone other than its author, which matters if the pattern is going to be shared or sold.

Once a design is finished, it can be saved and exported as a picture. That export is the point at which a chart stops being a working file and becomes something you can print, send to a test crocheter or attach to a pattern listing. It is a straightforward capability, but it is the one that makes the rest of the app useful outside your own device.

What the $3.49 buys

The pricing here is simple. My crochet designer costs $3.49 as a one-time download. There are no ads in the app and no in-app purchases offered, so the version you install is the version you keep. For a tool you might open for an hour at a time while working out a design, that is a comfortable arrangement.

It also sets the right expectation. A single payment for a drawing tool means no interrupted sessions and no second decision about whether to spend more. What you are judging is whether the feature set matches the way you design.

Compared with a free chart maker supported by advertising, the trade is money for an uninterrupted workspace with no ads. Compared with general drawing software, the trade is flexibility for symbols that already mean something in crochet. Neither is automatically better; it depends on whether you want a blank canvas or a craft-specific one.

Alternatives worth weighing

The obvious alternative is graph paper or a general drawing app, and for a small flat motif that is a perfectly reasonable choice. Where the dedicated approach earns its keep is in circular and combined work, where the app's rulers and its library of crochet elements do work that a generic canvas cannot. If your designs are mostly simple and rectangular, the difference will be smaller.

There is also the question of whether you need a charting tool at all. If you mostly follow patterns written by other people, the app will sit unused. It is a production tool for people who generate the charts, and the value only appears once you are the one deciding where each stitch goes.

The last comparison is with pen and paper, which remains faster for a rough sketch. The app's advantage is what happens after the sketch: editing an element, recoloring a section, renumbering rows and exporting a clean image. That is the stage where paper becomes frustrating, and it is the stage this app is built around.

A focused tool for crocheters who design

My crochet designer does one job and does not pretend otherwise. It gives you a field large enough for real projects, a library of basic, complex and loin crochet elements, per-element control over rotation, mirroring, color and size, rulers for accurate placement, notes and row numbers, and a way to save and export the result.

The reservations are about fit rather than quality. The audience is narrow, the install base is small, and the average rating of 3.7 from 68 ratings suggests the app has not delighted everyone who tried it. It is also a paid download, so the decision rests on knowing how you work.

If you design crochet patterns and want to move away from graph paper, this is worth considering. If you follow patterns rather than write them, or you only occasionally sketch a motif, the app will not have much to do. That is not a flaw in the app; it is simply a tool for the people who make the charts.