Images used in this tutorial are property of RepeatPatterns.com and may not be copied or used without express written permission.

With this Tutorial we will assume that you have some working knowledge of the Illustrator program, and now you want to build a repeat pattern for yourself. With that said, we’ll keep it simple and hopefully informative for all levels of ability.

There are a lot of plug-in tools and mini programs out there that will repeat or tile a pattern for you.  But the trouble with some of them is that they don’t bring enough life to a decorative pattern and they give you that gimmicky feeling about them.  Most final results look like the life is sucked out of even the best images being used.  Sure they make things easy for you, they are great for graphic backgrounds, and the results may be the goal you are looking for. That’s not why you are here though. As you know Repeatpatterns.com will not accept many overly simple patterns and some things are worth putting the time into. So we’ll try to walk you through at least one way to make a repeating pattern for yourself without heavy use of one click repeat programs.  Who knows? You may even have fun.

There a lot of different ways to bring a repeating pattern to life and as many different ways to lay one out. For now we will use some basic shapes and go through one process for building a successful pattern. Later if you want you can discuss techniques and style in one of our forums.

Getting started

Size

Choosing a size to start a vector pattern will be easier than a bitmap pattern. The great thing about vector patterns is they can be scaled to any size.  It’s actually a bit trickier than that if you get into having to resize the repeat without resizing the icons in the repeat. If you’ve had to do this then you know what a headache it can be. Here we like to start off with a division of 25.25 inches.  For example: 12.625, 8.4166, 6.3125 and so on.  That way we know what our image scale will be when we look at it and it will fit a common printing size for fabric.  Also the pattern will be ready for print on fabric without having to go through the resize issue. The size 8.4166 is what we’ll use here to give us enough room to put some shapes into it.

• Open a new document in Illustrator. File > new

For now we’ll work with document size of 25 X 25 inches RGB to give us a little space to play on the art board if needed.

• Select the rectangle tool and click once on the workspace. Enter the size 8.4166 X 8.4166. You don’t have to make it square if your pattern would look better in a rectangle. Just as long as either the width or height is 8.4166.  This box is important for a vector repeat because it will be what binds the entire pattern together, and will be our guide when we start moving stuff around.

 

Getting your shapes

Some designers like to plan out their designs in advance and know what they want to achieve before they start. Others sit down and work the space until it looks right. Here in this tutorial we have the luxury of having all the shapes we need for our pattern colored and ready to go.  It looks all neat and tidy now but at one point there were different color ideas and shapes of all sizes that didn’t seem to fit. Notice that the swatches palette has only the colors used in it. Please be sure to delete unused colors from the palette before submitting your pattern.

So let’s start building.

Choose two sides of the box to start building along.  Here we’ve chosen the left side and the top as our starting point.


By building we mean spacing your shapes in a way that best fills the space keeping in mind all of your design knowledge about space and color and so on.  As we go along adding shapes you’ll notice that pretty soon you’ll have to start thinking about what’s going to be on the right side and the bottom of that box.


Because we want this to be a seamless repeat we need to get the exact shapes from the left to appear on the right. The same shapes from the top will need to be on the bottom.  If either of these are off then we’ll have a problem.

Getting the exact shape. Left to right

Every shape that is on or near the left side needs to appear on the right side in the exact position in respects of the vertical lines of the box. To do this you’ll need the selection tool.

• Position the selection tool just above and to the left of the upper and most left shape. Then drag in a right and down motion. Moving all the way down and enough right until you have selected all of the shapes near or on the left vertical line of the box. When you release you should have something that looks like this.
  
• Now position the selection tool over the left vertical line of the box. While holding option key, so that it makes a copy, you’ll drag your selection straight across to the right vertical line of the box. If you keep your smart guides on and have snap turned on you’ll have no problem knowing you’ve done it right. Holding down the shift key, along with the option key, after you start moving will cause your selected shapes to move in a straight line.
  
  
  You won’t need the new box that carried over. Its only purpose was to give you a clean line to move to. Delete the new box. Do not delete the original one.

 

Getting the exact shape. Top to bottom

We now have all the information along the right side of the repeat. In a way this makes the top line complete, and ready to move down. Again you’ll need the selection tool.

• Position the selection tool just above and to the left of the upper and most left shape again. This time drag all the way to the right and down enough to select all of the shapes on or near the top horizontal line of the box. When you release it should look like this.
  
  
  You’ll notice here that only one star actually touches the line, but more are selected. This will later help us see what kind of space we have left.
• Position the selection tool over the top horizontal line of the box. Again hold down the option key and drag your selection straight down this time. Follow the guides or hold down shift as you go. Stop when it connects to the bottom horizontal line of the box.
  
  
  Again you can delete the new box. Do not delete the old one. Notice the space we have left.

What to do with the blank space?

Now that all of the information is around the box you can see the space you’ve taken up. At this point you have some choices to make as a designer. “Do I want lots of space between the shapes and just nudge stuff around until I like how it looks, or am I thinking that the spacing is fine for now so I’ll add a few pieces to fill the space.”  It’s up to you to decide when you face this choice.  Every pattern will give you new challenges anyway.

• For this pattern we are going to act like we got them in the right spot first go and then add a few shapes to the space.
  
  
  The pattern looks done for the most part, but there are still a few things we need to do get it cleaned up and see if it repeats.

 

Still to do

When you reach a point with your design that you are happy with the spacing you can get rid of all the shapes outside of the box. Make sure that none of the shapes you get rid of are actually touching the lines of the box.  If you think something is close then just leave it.


We’ve also added a color to the background.


This step will be necessary even if you don’t want a color in the background RepeatPatterns.com will require you to put in a white background. Your pattern will be checked for this.
To do this we’ll have to make a new box and have it placed exactly over the first one we made.

• First select the original box only. Then go to Edit>copy or Hold down Apple + C.
• To paste it exactly on top of itself go to Edit>paste in Front or Hold down apple + F.

You’ll now have two boxes one on top of the other. You will put your fill into the upper of the two with no stroke (white fill if you don’t plan for any other color.) You will now need to remove the stroke and the fill from the lower box. If you are not sure which box you have then open your layer palette. Window>layers or hit F7. The box on the bottom should have no stroke or fill and needs to be behind all of the shapes in the pattern including the background color.




This is very important because it will be the defining area of your repeat even though there might be pieces sticking out. So make sure it is behind everything.  Use your Layer palette if you have trouble selecting either box.

 

See if it repeats

Once again get the selection tool and position the arrow just above and to the left of the upper and most left shape. This time drag all the way down and all the way to the right selecting the whole pattern.



Position the arrow over the right vertical line of the box. And drag the whole thing over to your swatches palette.


You’ll see a new addition pop up in the palette. That is your pattern swatch.

To get a good look at your repeat you’ll need to get the rectangle tool and make a large shape that you can test your new fill pattern.
Off to the right of your Art board make a rectangle about 3 times the size of your repeat.



Make sure the fill box is in the front and while your new rectangle is selected fill it with your new pattern.
Find the repeat within the rectangle and inspect were the edges would be very carefully. There will be a seamless transition from the left side to the right, and from the top to the bottom if all worked well. If not then go to common problems.

All is well…now what?

Cropping the image.

Here is a helpful stage that will help you with your EPS file. Be sure to save your file as is for the mother program with all the nice strokes and fills from your artwork. See Submission guide (so what am I sending). Now save your file again and start searching for open paths and closing them. Expand any strokes you have so everything becomes a filled shape.

Now we need to take care of the over hanging shapes. We’ll trim away those pieces of the shapes that cross outside of the repeat box.

• Make sure you have your layer palette open. Toggle to the bottom and select the box with no fill or stroke.
  
• Copy and paste it on top of itself. Apple + C, then apple +F. Or Edit> copy then Edit > Paste in front. You should now have two boxes with no fill or stroke.
  
• Select the new box and send it to the top of the layer palette. Apple + shift + ]. Or Object > arrange > bring to front.
  
• We want to select all of the repeat layers except the box with no fill or stroke on the bottom. The easiest way to do this is to select all of the layers in your repeat. Apple + A. Then toggle to the bottom of the layers again and, while holding shift, click on the blue box on the right hand side of the no fill no stroke layer. That will deselect it.
  
• While everything else is still selected open the pathfinder palette. Window> pathfinder. Choose the Crop option and click it once.
  
  
  This will cut away everything that was outside of the box. It will also for some reason group all of your objects. You can leave them grouped or immediately ungroup them while they are still selected. Object> ungroup.
  
• Select all of the repeat objects again and this time drag it all to the swatches palette and check your repeat again. All should still be well, but it never hurts to check.

 

Common problem 1

Normally while building a pattern you’ll be pushing things here and nudging things there and maybe trying different shapes or icons to see how they look. Sometimes this can cause a problem that will go unnoticed all the way to the “check repeat stage.”  Say for example along the way of building this repeat we moved a shape on the right down a bit from its original partner on the left.


We are finally happy with the spacing and we’re ready to test it. We’ve dragged the whole thing into the swatches palette and are now checking out our new fill in the big rectangle. On a careful inspection of our repeat we spot this.


This is an example of when shapes don’t carry over exactly to the opposite side. Or when they are moved around in the layout process and not copied over again.

• The problem is easily fixed and after a while you’ll find yourself repeating this stage over and over as you move things around and redraw shapes. Just go back to your repeat and figure out which shape is the culprit and delete it.
  
  
  
  
  
• Once again position the selection tool just above and to the left of the upper and most left shape again. This time only drag enough to select the replacement shape and box.
  
• Once again take the selection from the left vertical line and drag it straight across to the right vertical line. Follow the “see if it repeats” steps again and it should be seamless.
  

The problem could show up on any edge of the repeat. Here we used the right side for example. Follow the appropriate steps for the “top to bottom” if needed.

 

Common problem 2

You try out your repeat and there are white lines around the pattern that are repeating along with it.


This will happen if the box with no fill or stroke is not at the back or bottom of the stack.


See image 12 and 13. Follow those steps to correct it. Just make sure that that box goes to the bottom. If all is well after this go back to “all is well…now what?”

If you follow this tutorial regardless of how you lay out your design, Left to right or top to bottom, or what your level of ability is, you should always check your pattern to make sure it repeats.