Lauren,

Welcome!

What a lovely idea!

The four color palettes are:

DMC: This is a popular brand of floss, though availability is different for different areas.

Anchor: This is a different brand, also easier to get in some areas than others.

Madeira: This is another brand, one which I haven't seen in my area; it may be more readily available in Europe.

Red Heart Super Saver: This is NOT embroidery floss; it's worsted weight acrylic yarn. This is not at all suitable for cross stitch, but it was added to the palette for people who are stitching in techiques that produce square stitches.

Ordering the floss is tough, but not impossible. It sounds like you live in a cross stitch store desert, as I do, sigh, so the next best thing is mail order. (I'm sorry to say we don't sell floss through our site.)

You may want to try a search for "embroidery floss" and then your general area and see what kinds of results you get. You may have to order from someone in your country but outside of your area.

If you're asking about how many plies to use, this is determined by the count of your fabric. An 18 count may only require one or two strands; an 11 may require two or three strands. For instance, I've used mostly two, sometimes three strands on 11 count Aida, and though the coverage was much better with three, I personally preferred using two. With 14 count Aida or linen (stitched over 2) I discovered two strands were optimal. With 18 count I've used two strands - I liked the results better with more coverage. For something like a 24 count Congress cloth, I've used one strand and that worked well.

The number of stitches you'll need will be based on the size of cloth you're using. If you're using 14 count Aida and you're in the US, for example, you'll multiply 14 x 8.5 to get the number of stitches across, which equals 119 stitches. If you're using a different size, such as an 18 count, 18 x 8.5 = 153 stitches, etc.

With your image, the best thing to do is reduce it to the size you need, since the freePatternWizard isn't a graphics program and taking a very large image probably won't give a good result. So for example, if your desired size is 100 x 150 stitches, it's best to make your image that will be uploaded 100 x 150 pixels, where pixels = stitches.

Hope that helps!

Just a thought...it sounds like you might be feeling overwhelmed by all of the different options...perhaps before you start on this large project, you might want to find a very small cross stitch kit that includes all of the floss, fabric, pattern and instructions you need. There are several online resellers of kits like that and if you pick out one of those, it might help to answer many of your questions in a way me just talking about it can't do, because you'll be able to look at it up close and actually SEE it.