MHershey,

Welcome!

Okay, it's going to sound pretty complicated, which it really isn't.

In order to make it a certain size, you have to know how many stitches per inch there are in your gauge. That requires making something called a gauge swatch. Every gauge swatch depends on a number of factors: your yarn, hook and your own tension. Even with the same fiber and hook, you and I would very likely have completely different gauges.

You need to make at least a 4 inch x 4 inch swatch (square) in your chosen yarn (and some people recommend more like 5 inch x 5 inch), with your chosen hook. The purpose of this square is to tell you how many stitches per inch are in your gauge. So if you measure 4 inches of your swatch and determine you have 20 stitches in those 4 inches, you would divide that 20 by 4 to come up with 5 stitches per inch.

Then you would multiply that by the number of stitches across, so in this case, 5 x 60 = 300 stitches.

Once you know how many stitches across, you can then calculate where the center of your star would be and place it in your image accordingly. Also, when you make your image, the best thing to do is make it so pixels = stitches across. So if you want to make it 300 stitches across, for example, the best image will be 300 pixels across. The length is a bit more difficult. You can calculate the number of rows in the same way you calculated the stitches across, but the freePatternWizard at this time doesn't allow you to designate the number of rows, so the best thing to do is make your best estimation. Crochet stitches are not square, they're rectangular, so the calculation of rows = pixels won't work here.

Hope that helps! It sounds more complex than it is, but swatching is essential for so many things, particularly fitted garments and other projects that require actual measurements, so unless you're making something where a swatch isn't important, such as a scarf, swatching will help to save you a lot of tearing out beautifully made items that would otherwise end up too large or too small.

MHershey,

You're so welcome!

Swatching is a necessary evil...LOL, most don't like it...including me. But if you want accuracy, it's important.