How to layout a saying for yourself

There has been a lot of discussion on the Needlepoint Nation this past week about people wanting a saying charted for needlepoint.  I won't go there since it is political; and I try not to talk politics, either in the shop or on this blog.  In this blog entry, I'm interested in the mechanics of doing your own chart of a saying for stitching in needlepoint.  I went through some steps on NN, as follows:

1.  Decide how big you want the finished canvas to be
2.  What font do you like (upper case, lower case, sans serif, whatever)
3.  What mesh do you want to stitch on.  Regrettably for some people, long sayings need to be on
     18mesh.
4.  Get a piece of graph paper (you can download some from the internet) and start charting the
     wording.  Now you are down to a mathematical problem where you try to fit your letters into the
     space you have allotted for the saying.  At this point, changes may need to be made to the font, the
     mesh, or the overall size.  Good luck.
5.  To finish off your saying, you might look on line for a border to add to your piece.

As you see, this is an involved process that many people cannot master.  That is why there are designers who specialize in sayings, or shops that do custom designs.