Sprite Stitch Board!

I actually cannot work with just a black and white pattern. I HAVE to go over the entire pattern and outline all the different colours. I've started to do this with a somewhat complex 36 colour pattern (135x180) and good heavens, I haven't done more than 1/5 of it so far and I want to start stitching already

I wish there were more sections of about 500 squares of the same colour. It'd be so much faster.

Are you able to print the pattern in colour? If you have access to the pattern file itself instead of just a pdf, should be easy enough to do. For complex patterns having it in colour definitely helps a lot.

This is a very late response, but I thought I would add my two cents anyway.

When I am dealing with a large black and white pattern, sometimes I will highlight all of the instances of one symbol on a page in yellow. After I've finished stitching it I will go over the same symbol again but with an orange highlighter. Then I will move onto the next symbol and repeat the process.

I like this method because I don't have to do a lot of prep work before I start to stitch a bit. I dislike it because it restricts me to only stitching with one colour at a time.

I have a few different colored markers that I'll tag a few symbols with, then as I stitch them I mark them out with a black marker. I really helps me keep my place.

Have you tried to print the pattern and use colored pencils to paint symbols according with the thread color?