The Starry Night (Vincent Van Gogh) – latch hook project

This is my third Van Gogh latch hook project (see my first one and my second one) . . . here’s what I am doing, with progress shown in an anticipated 12 stages and musings along the way 🙂

January 8th, 2026: I began planning this project. Using pic2pat.com, I uploaded a good quality photo of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” to the site, which converts it to a cross stitch pattern. It allows you to choose from a large selection of color palettes, from 150 down to 2 (a silhouette). The more colors, the better the “resolution”, and the more it looks like the original picture. There are about 500 shades of DMC floss, but only 84 shades of precut latch hook yarn from the only supplier I could find. So I selected the closest approximations for 30 colors in Herrschners’ precut yarn ($1.19 for a package with 320 strands of a single color – sometimes they are on sale for $0.89 per package). The pic2pat site tells you exactly how many stitches for each color, which is a huge help in calculating how much latch hook yarn to purchase. You could buy yarn less expensively if you decided to cut it all yourself, but with a large project like this (28,350 stitches), you would need to consider how much time you wanted to spend doing that. I invested several hours in the planning side of the process, before placing my order and waiting for it to arrive. I also ordered my canvas – 100% cotton rug hooking mesh canvas, 3.75 mesh, 60 x 44 inches (150 x 110 cm). I already had a latch hook tool from an earlier project. (The formula for calculating what size to choose on your pattern is – choose the canvas size you would like for your finished piece. The smallest number of stitches per inch on pic2pat is 8, so choose that option. Now divide each dimension of your desired canvas size by 8 and then multiply by the mesh size of the canvas you would like to use, which for me was 3.75. For my 60 x 44 canvas, this calculation comes to 28.1 x 20.6, so I chose for my pattern the nearest size on pic2pat that was not more than that, which was 28 x 19.3)

February 25th, 2026: I received my supplies and thought “that doesn’t look like enough yarn,” but just shrugged my shoulders and began my project. The first step is to label each package with the corresponding symbol from the pattern. It is a tedious process and well worth the time it takes to do so, as it helps everything go smoothly in choosing the right color each time! The second step is to calculate carefully where to begin the project (I recommend always beginning in a corner!) and making sure there will be adequate margin on all sides. If it’s not too tight of a fit, I also recommend beginning at a corner of one of the pre-printed blue squares on the canvas (10×10) because that will simplify counting and recounting as you work. (Note: I check at least 3 or 4 times during each row portion that I am aligned correctly with the previous row, which saves a lot of heartache in the case of miscounting or miscalculating, which happens quite frequently if you do your work while watching a show, as I usually do!)

March 2nd, 2026: After the first couple of days of getting back into this beloved craft (which I have missed so much, not having done any for three years), I realized my mistake in not ordering enough yarn. The pic2pat pattern tells how many skeins of DMC floss each color needs, and on the day I ordered the yarn, I absentmindedly used those numbers instead of calculating the number of packages of pre-cut latch hook yarn (by dividing the number of stitches for each color by 320, the number of strands in each package). I ordered the rest of the packages, and thankfully had enough to work with while that order was being processed, shipped, and delivered!

March 11th, 2026: Stage 1 of 15 of “The Starry Night” … I’ve finally started on my next huge Van Gogh latch hook project. It’s the same size as my previous two projects, and this interpretation of a masterpiece is in landscape orientation, with 30 beautiful colors in the palette. I’ve begun with a section on the lower left, and many colors are already in play – I am enjoying each and every row so very much! (This is not a surprise for them, but the completed canvas will be part of our wedding present for Jonathan & Aditi. Since they currently live with us, I share progress with them regularly!)