Nowadays designing your own fabric can be as simple as typing a prompt (or even saying it). But nothing beats a design that comes out of your own brain – this goes for every sewist, textile lover and designer with a motif in mind and dreams of seeing it printed on a fabric. Using the tools available to get there is a no-brainer. Here are the 2 easiest ways to bring your motif to life on your own fabric – one using Canva and one with illustrator (With video) and info about some revolutionary new pattern making tools.
Step 1: Design your motifs / Patterns
Choosing the aesthetics you are aiming for with the new pattern : The first step is deciding what you’re designing for. Actually when you do this, it is best if you have a sewing project in mind.
And your preferences ofcourse. Usually most of the patterns start as floral sketches; as most everyone likes floral and botanical motifs. I too love all kinds of cute flower patterns, but you may be into the darker elements. Each to his own.
So the first step is to create the elements that make up the pattern : I am talking about the building blocks of your pattern: the motifs.
You can either use just the outlines or be elaborate with colors and details.
The scale of the individual motif you design is more important than you know. The motif that looks ok on the computer screen can look completely different when it is printed on a fabric. One reason is that scale of the motif changes the appearance. Depending on the size of your monitor, the 6 inch flower motif and a 1 inch flower motif can look the same. The one that looks good on the screen may look out of scale when it is printed on to the fabric.
Imagine placing lots of motifs larger than 2 inches allover your dress. In your imagination those large hearts looked good but maybe it is too overwhelming and even busy on your body when on your dress. In ditsy printed fabric a floral motif may even be smaller than half an inch. Some may even measure around 1/8th of an inch. If you want a statemant ikat type pattern, it can be as wide as 3 inches or more. The diamond motifs which are popualr in home decor are usually around 1.5 inch wide.
What you can do is to take a print out of a part of the design, at 100% scale to see how it will look when printed. You do not want to be surprised.
Step 2: Digitizing your Sketches
Once sketches are ready, and you have decided on the scale and size of each motif, it’s time to digitize them.
There are 2 ways you do it digitally – make it into a pixel based artwork on photoshop or use a vector tool like Illustrator.
Pixel programs have one big advantage: texture. You can create endless effects, from painterly textures to photo-realistic images. Procreate, and Adobe photoshop are pixel programs. If you want painterly water color like effects, play with textures, these are the tools you should use in your motif designing for patterns. You just have to be extra careful to avoid blurry prints. Checkout this post on creating fabric prints using photoshop.
Vector graphics are point-based, and you can move the lines of your artwork, fill, or outline them however you like. Vector based tools give you crisp, clean lines and you can re-size them, however big or small you want to resize. You can draw incredibly precise drawings with them. Geometric designs are best made on vector tools. I repeatedly read these on all tutorials – that “Vector patterns scale infinitely to any yardage without ever pixelating or blurring.”
Adobe illustrator and Inkscape are your tools for these..
My favourite is Adobe Illustrator to vectorize my sketches. But the pixel programs have their fans. Some start in Photoshop and then continue in Illustrator for precision.
If you have a graphic tablet, it makes drawing directly into Illustrator much easier. I use the app Illustrator for ipad and use the ipad pencil to draw the elements. You can first make original sketches on fabric and then draw it as final on the ipad. If you have an ipad with Apple pencil, Procreate is an exclusive ipad only tool which is excellent for drawing these elements and digitizing them. It is only limited by your imagination. Both are paid tools. Inkscape is free.
Step 3: Building a Repeat Pattern Tile
This I think, is where the fun starts , if you havent been there already. Your digitized motif has to be arranged in a repeat pattern. You can adjust scale – making the print bigger or smaller depending your final design
A repeat tile ensures your design looks continuous when printed on fabric. The design sits within a square (or rectangle) tile.
This is where the magic happens: arranging motifs into a seamless repeat. The hard core designers are full hands-on. They produce a full repeat on paper, then use Photoshop to smooth the edges.
But for beginners and those who are in a hurry software tools can make the process a lot easier. I am talking about tools like Illustrator’s Pattern Tool or the Tile to pattern tool on canva
You can easily flip it reverse it, and spread theelements that way you want using Illustrator’s Pattern Tool. The software basically creates the repeat for you. As long as your artboard matches the repeat tile size, the export should come out seamless. Canva is more limiting but far easier.
How to create seamless patterns using Canva
Here is how I use the Canva tool to create one repeat tile
Prepare your motif and keep it ready. I prefer to delete all the extra space around the motifs but you can retain it if that is how you prefer it.
Watch the video on making the fabric pattern repeats on Canva:
In Canva, open a custom-size design. For example, use a 10 × 10 cm square. Select the app Tile to pattern and Add your motif and select the pattern repeat you want.
Straight repeat (full drop repeat)
Motifs line up vertically and horizontally in regular rows and columns.
Half drop repeat
This is staggered arrangement of motifs on fabric with every alternate column shifted vertically by half the repeat height.
Brick repeat (half-brick repeat)
Alternate rows shift horizontally by half the repeat width, like bricks in a wall.
Creating Seamless repeat fabric patterns on Illustrator
Canva is a beginner tool for everything designing – a jack of all trades. But Illustrator is a ‘true-blue’ designer tool. It creates seamless fabric patterns more efficiently . Its Pattern Make tool is very easy to use.
First copy paste your design on the new file .
Click on object – then on pattern – then on make.
Just like that, the pattern forms
Change the pattern repeat on the window that appears. On the same window you can change the tile dimensions, spacing, overlap etc. Watch the video to see it in action.
Interwoven Designs
I was talking about arranging single motifs on a fabric till now – which is absolutely the easiest job in designing. For interwoven designs the process is a little more complicated. You will have to split the design appropriately and then repeat it as tiles.
It’s trickier but worth it for intricate, continuous patterns.
This design tile, if joined as such would not look seamless.
You have to cut out the tile or design the tile so that it can be joined seamlessly.
Join the tiles appropriately.
When made into a repeated pattern, the tile should join seamlessly with other tiles. Ensure that left and right edges join clearly.
Actually this is a rather simple explanation of a rather complicated process, which fabric pattern designers are adept at. Making beautiful complex patterns require quite a large skillset and creativity than just cutting and pasting. You will have to deal with different layers of elements & motifs and then overlapping them and then making sure that the repeat is done seamlessly is nothing short of magic.
Anyways, Watch this video of making this simple enough pattern repeat in MS-paint – the traditional way.
Latest tools for fabric pattern design
I talked about the revolutionary websites that seems to have turned the fabric designing process on its head. Checkout the following websites – my eyes did pop out. They are enough to make even the most beginner artist among us the best and most creative.
Patterned.ai – If you do not like ai tools, this is not for you because it uses prompts to make images and then those images are turned into seamless patterns. Great for non-artists who are not averse to using ai for creating repeating textile designs with one click.
NewArc.ai – This is a visualisation tool. it is great for turning your sketches into realistic images. You can experiment with fabric textures and colors. You can experiment with layering your elements in any way you want and see it on your project.
Step 4: Preparing the File for Printing
Always double-check the repeat to look out for unwanted overlaps or seam misses or double lines. You do not want your final printout to comeback with gaps or extra lines.
And there is one warning – the colors you see on your screen may not be what you get from your printer. Which is a problem with digital files always. I see it all the time on machine embroidery design files, though for different reasons. The physical output can change because of so many variables. But if you are a professional you may be having a calibrated monitor. And on top of that if you have the color profile used by your printer, you can load it in your software and get ‘the’almost’ exact outputs. I said almost because even with those precautions, the color output may vary.
The specifications of the pattern design file you need for fabric printing is altogether dependant on your printing company.When your design is ready, export it as PNG at 300 dpi(or ask your printer) . Nowdays there are print shops which take lesser dpi and still give ok output but 300 dpi is the industry standard. CMYK is what has been used printing. But some printers may require RGB files, some even ask for sRGB.
Related posts: What are the textile printing options you have ? ; Creating fabric patterns for tshirts with Inscape
