There are lots of tutorials out there on “how to create a fabric design”, but they tend to focus on the technical aspects of creating a tiling image, and don’t usually provide much detail on the actual design process, or pointers on what makes a design work well. I don’t claim to be an expert, but in this blog series I’m sharing what I’ve learned from years of studying, reproducing and creating fabric designs.

One way I developed my eye for pattern design was by initially reproducing vintage prints (which in fact was the reason I got into it in the first place - I didn’t actually set out to create my own designs). If you’re interested in designing your own fabric, it can be helpful to start by looking at other designers’ work (vintage or modern, depending on your preference). Find designs you like and really study them, analyse what makes them work well - consider the elements I discussed in part 1 of this series: directionality, density and in particular the size and configuration of the repeat.

It was this print that inspired me to get into fabric design after I fell in love with it in a dress that wasn’t my size. It became one of the very first prints I ever reproduced from a vintage fabric

One of the most intangible aspects of surface pattern design - and the part which draws on actual design skill - is achieving a feeling of balance and flow in a repeating design. This is something I’ve struggled with in some of my own designs, and I’ve learned a lot through trial and error and analysing what makes some designs work better than others.

As I say I’m not an expert, but studying and reproducing vintage prints has helped me to get a feel for some of the principles that help a design to flow well and look good at scale. Here are my five top tips for successful patterns:

1. Consistency is Key

You want to ensure your pattern has variety, but not too much variety. Very effective patterns can be achieved by arranging similarly-sized and -shaped motifs, either individually or in clusters, spaced out evenly across the design. Another way to maintain consistency is in the styling of the design elements - this is particularly important when you’re incorporating several different motifs. For example in the Paris Landmarks print below, the buildings are all different shapes, but are all illustrated in the same style and colour palette, which ensures a cohesive overall look.

Ensuring that all your elements are a consistent size and shape can help a pattern flow. However, the best versions of this principle still incorporate variety within that constraint, which helps give the design dimension and depth. One example of this is the Delivery Boys print below, reproduced from an original 1940s design - from a distance the figures all form the same basic shape, but a closer look reveals that they are each slightly different, holding bouquets, parcels or love letters. If you look even closer, you’ll see that even the ‘same’ figures have small variations. I call this the ‘same but different’ principle.

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2. Utilise Alignment

Intuitively it feels like ‘scattered’ designs should be the easiest to make, but in fact it can be surprisingly hard to balance out a scattered print in a way that still looks appropriately random and uncontrived. On the other hand, orderly arrays are both pleasing to the eye and relatively straightforward to assemble, so when you’re first getting started with pattern design they can be a good go-to. Following the ‘same but different’ principle, incorporating variation within the arrayed motifs will give depth to the design and help it not to feel too static.

Even scattered designs can have an overall more pleasing effect and look more balanced if the elements have some form of alignment. One way to achieve this is by mapping your motifs onto a basic ‘polka dot’ layout. Shift the elements slightly off perfect alignment for a less regimented, more organic feel. The three prints below are all based on a fairly regular polka dot plan, but retain a random look due to variation in the motifs themselves and/or by rotating to various angles.

3. Create Focal Points

When you start incorporating multiple different sizes and shapes in design elements, it becomes more important to provide balance and harmony by allowing some elements to take centre stage, while others recede into the background. Looking back at my designs which I wasn’t completely happy with, it’s usually because there isn’t a good focus, especially when I’ve added a lot of variety but not enough variation (in size, detail or colour value); the pattern elements end up competing for attention and making the whole effect more fussy than harmonious.

A focal point can be created through different types of contrast, including:

Size - larger motifs surrounded by smaller ones will become focal points
Detail - more elaborate motifs will stand out against simpler elements
Texture - textured areas on a solid ground, or conversely large blocks of colour against a textured ground, are two ways to create focal points by varying texture
Colour - using colour contrast. Brighter colours will tend to visually advance to the foreground while pastels and neutrals will recede

Often, effective focal points combine these different types of contrast. The original 1940s Central Park print below is, in my opinion, close to a perfect design for apparel fabric. It utilises several types of contrast to create primary and secondary focal points against a textured ground, combining differently sized and shaped elements in perfect proportion to fill the space in a way that doesn’t feel busy or overwhelming.

It also follows the ‘same but different’ principle: although they all look the same at a glance, look closely and you can see each scene has very slight variation in the clouds, trees and colour washes, which again helps to give a more dynamic overall effect.

4. Design With The Repeat in Mind

Start thinking about how your design will repeat at the earliest possible stage in the development process. It’s no good filling your artboard with intricately entwined motifs, if when you come to the repeat the edges don’t mesh well, and you have to take the whole thing apart and start again.

My usual approach is to create the individual motifs first, then at the point I’m bringing them together, I’m either doing that directly in Illustrator’s pattern maker, or if I’m sketching out a rough layout (since the pattern maker can be RAM-intensive) then I’m at least being mindful of how they will fall in the repeat.

Butterfly Mail has a lot of intersecting and overlapping elements. You can see in the early draft below how I began building up the pattern as a repeated design in Illustrator’s pattern maker, which helped me to figure out how the shapes worked together and how best to close up gaps. As you can see, the stamps in this draft aren’t even fully realised yet and some are quite different to what ended up in the final pattern, which gives you an idea of how early on in the process this is.

Sometimes (very occasionally!) I even sketch out how the repeat will work at the very start of the process. The shapes in my Santorini Architecture print abut each other with no space in between so the repeat was integral to creating the design. In my initial sketch you can see how I’ve started repeating the shapes at the edges of the tile area to ensure they will tessellate once the design is repeated.

5. Colour Balance and Harmony

There are various ways you can use colour to help achieve balance in a fabric design. One important step in the design process is to select a harmonious colour palette. Colour theory can help identify colours that will work well together. There are also countless resources of suggested colour palettes which can be found on Pinterest and can be especially helpful if you’re looking for inspiration for a particular theme - just search on a keyword such as “southwestern’, “driftwood”, or “macaron” + “colour palette”.

Colour can also be used to provide balance and focal points. As you develop a design pay attention to any ‘patterns’ the colours make, intentional or unintentional. Do you want to cluster similar colours together, or spread them evenly across the design area? Is there a dominant colour? What proportions do the colours appear in? How do the areas of colour balance each other? Remember of course to factor in your repeat - if you have one red motif on the left hand side of your tile, and another on the right, bear in mind that they’re going to be next to each other once the design is tiled.

Limiting the number of colours you use in a design can also help make it easier to ensure a balanced distribution - most of my designs use between 5 and 8 colours. While developing one of my newest designs with several different motifs, I realised that I’d used a particular colour as the dominant colour in only one of the motifs; it was an accent colour throughout the rest of the design. This made that one motif an unintentional focal point in the repeat. To restore a balance, I would need to either give a few more of the motifs this dominant colour so it was more evenly spread, or change it to one of the two dominant colours present in the other motifs.

The various luggage labels in Jet Set below all use the colours in the palette in different proportions, but each colour gets roughly equal air time in the overall repeat.