How to create the repeat?

Getting a pattern to repeat on a fabric is not easy at first. But fortunately, many sites will show you how. In this post, I’ll be sharing my favorite (I didn’t invent anything, these links helped me so much!)

The place where it’s very well explained is here: on the Bardot Brush site. I recommend to read this and try things!

My steps

Step 1: I will always draw on the middle-left area and leave some space for the repeat (see below: I did draw some snails and the orange lines represent the future slices I will make with space left)

The first area I use to plan my repeat – this is how my snails patterns were made. 🐌🐌

Step 2: I will take a backup layer of my drawing, just in case (I duplicate and hide the duplicate layer). Then I will draw lines to fill all 4 corners. That will create little triangles and will ensure that I will move all the square.

Step 3: I will duplicate this layer. I will obtain 2 identical layers, both with the 4 corners visible.

Step 4: I will slice and move both layers, moving them with the snap options selected. I move one left, one right: Procreate will let me know when to stop moving with a visual indicator – and triangles will come together, in the middle. Then I am ready to draw (I merge both layers and I delete the triangles). I repeat the operation to finish my pattern, but this time with one up, one down. My advice: don’t forget to take a backup of each layer, just in case!

Here the middle triangles are deleted already

How to verify your pattern?

On the same site, Bardot Brushes, you will find a repeat pattern tester! It’s free and easy to use. The link is here (to keep in your favorites)

You can bring Safari in a shared screen with procreate and drag & drop any layer to the site directly. You can zoom and investigate your pattern and when you are done, you slice left the Safari page to get Procreate on full screen again.

Note that is you are working with multiple layers and you don’t want to merge them now, you can do the “Copy All” option (you slice 3 fingers down, and select Copy All) and paste (you slice 3 fingers down again, and select Paste — all layers and background will be together in one new layer! You can drag this layer in Bardot Brush repeat site and preview your pattern – then you can delete this layer…

You can merge both pages together
The result of the merge
The testing!

Hope it was helpful- have a happy time designing your next repeat! 🐌🐌

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