What 'confetti' means in cross stitch, and why it matters
Confetti is single stitches of a colour scattered on their own, with no neighbour of the same shade.
Where it comes from
A chart made by running a photograph through a converter picks the nearest floss colour for every square independently, so a soft gradient becomes a scatter of near-identical shades. Each of those lone stitches means threading a needle for one X. A heavy-confetti chart can take three times as long as a clean one with the same stitch count.
How much is too much
We measure it as the share of stitches with no orthogonal neighbour of their own colour. Across hundreds of designs, every chart that failed review came in above two per cent and every one that passed came in under one. The number is printed in the shop for each pattern.
What we do about it
Designs here start as flat art with hard edges and a small palette, which is why they chart cleanly. The chart is then despeckled, so a stray single stitch is given the colour of its neighbours, and anything that still measures over two per cent is not put on sale.
