How to set up a pattern manually

February 10th, 2018

Hi lovelies!

Today I´d like to explain how we can set up a seamless pattern in a manual way, without using any design program.

By doing this exercise, you will understand how a repeat pattern (that could be used on any surface) works.

These are the steps to follow:

• First, we draw in a paper all the motifs that will make our design. In my case, I have drawn some random flowers, avoiding visually horizontal or vertical lines with our elements.
• We cut into 4 equal parts the imagen that we have been drawing.
• After this, we create our base module for the pattern. For doing this, we must swap the 4 parts that we cut. This means that in the original rectangle we had above parts 1 and 2 and below parts 3 and 4 and now we change the positions having now above parts 4 and 3 and below parts 2 and 1. We use now sellotape at the back to attach the four parts. Our module is done.
• Now we can draw some other motifs if we see that there are some white gaps in the module.

• We make 4 copies of the module to assemble.

• Finally, we put together the four copies.
• Mi module looks like this:

It is a simple and basic exercise, but important to make you understand how seamless patterns work.

I encourage you to try yours and comment below!

Thanks for reading!