How to Create Repeating Patterns in Procreate

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Maker's Gonna Learn YouTube channel. Today we are going to be learning how to make seamless repeating patterns using Procreate. All right, so today we're talking about making repeating patterns in Procreate which is very helpful if you are going to use your patterns to make textiles, to put them on t-shirts. So we're going to learn how to make a seamless repeating pattern which is so helpful for crafters if you want to use it for sublimation, for wraps, cup wraps, for textiles, for maybe printmaking. It's really exciting to learn that you can do this with Procreate. So I want to show you an example of a pattern that is not seamlessly repeating. So we're going to pick this pattern right here that I drew in Procreate. We're going to make sure that our magnetics and our snapping are on for this entire video because that's what's going to help us with pattern making. So for this pattern I'm going to go ahead and scale it down to a quadrant size and I'm going to duplicate it and put it side by side so we can see that this pattern does not seamlessly repeat right here on its edge. So none of these details in my pattern are going to be able to repeat seamlessly. So we can do the same thing and duplicate these patterns as well and just see that it's not a repeating pattern on the edges. So we're going to learn how to make a repeating pattern. So if you duplicate it any which way, line up any edge, it will always connect. So this would be an example of a repeating pattern. So we're going to go ahead and look at this pattern. So I'm going to use my pencil to show you what I am teaching about. So I'm going to go ahead and pick. So we are looking at the edges of our pattern. So this piece right here and this piece right here are touching edge wise. They are perfectly matching up on those edges. This piece right here and this one right here, that's the edge of this piece. You can also see that these pieces in the corners are all the same piece. So when they are edge to edge, they will connect. So let's go ahead and give this a test. So we are going to, whoops, there's my little pencil mark. There we go. We're going to scale this down to quadrant sizes. Go ahead and duplicate this. Pull it over and let's take a look. Those patterns and pieces, they connected seamlessly. So that means all of our edges were connecting and matching. We can do it one more time. Try top to bottom and those edges all connected and made a seamless repeating pattern. So you can't see any cut or break in this pattern. So this is what we're going to make today. Sometimes, well like this one right here, I was showing Sterling this one because I didn't think it connected. And it does, but it's off ever so slightly. So if they're off ever so slightly, they won't. I mean it has to be like legit perfect. All right, let's go ahead and open a new canvas. So for patterns, I prefer it to be a square canvas. It's just easier to see the edges and how they would match in a quadrant, in four different quadrants. So we're going to pick this top square size right here and open. Okay, today we are going to make a very simple heart pattern. So we're going to be drawing lots of hearts on our art board. So I'm going to go ahead and come down to calligraphy and pick this little rad and happy brat. And I have my colors all ready to go down here. So we're going to pick this red. We're just going to start filling the canvas with some hearts. This is going to be very simple, whoa, very simple heart pattern. So I just want you to get the basics of pattern making. Now patterns can be as intricately designed as you want them to be. But today, just for the sake of time and also hoping you understand the basics here of pattern making, I'm choosing a very simple design. All right, we'll do one more heart right here. Okay, so now we have hearts that are filling our canvas, but they're not touching the edges. So we don't want any hearts to touch the edge. We just want to fill the center with a design. So you can pick whatever it is, flowers, stars. So what we're going to do is come up here and select restart. So what we're going to do is take three fingers and swipe down and we are going to click copy all. And we're going to do one more time, a three finger swipe down brings the copy paste menu and we're going to press paste. So now we have our hearts up above this bottom layer. We're not going to use that bottom layer anymore, so we can just go ahead and delete that. So now we have our layer with the background. So you can see it has a white background and it has hearts. We're going to go ahead and duplicate that. So now we have two layers of the same thing. We're going to take the top layer. We're going to come select the top layer with your snapping function clicked on and your magnetics function. Those need to be on in order for this to work. So you're going to select this layer and I want you to drag it sideways until those blue dots touch the corners. As you can see the blue dots at the top and bottom are touching the center and the corner. So we just drag and it'll snap to the corners. So that was the top layer. Now we're going to take the bottom layer, do the same thing but drag to the left. So we're going to select and drag the bottom layer to the left until it snaps into place. So what we just did is we split our pattern in half. So now you can see we have one edge that's connected to the other. So this part of our heart, of this heart. Let's go ahead and merge those down so we can see. This heart and this heart are touching and so that is an edge that they made. So now these two hearts are perfectly matching up on the edges. So let's go ahead and get rid of those little arrows. So now we have lots of free space in the center to draw more hearts. So let's draw some more hearts here. Do a big one in the center. Let's add a layer so we can draw more hearts and fill the center. Heart here and here. Again, we're not going to draw any hearts on the edges. We're just trying to fill the center. So now we have that center filled. We are going to merge those hearts down to that layer and we're going to duplicate the layer. So now we have two layers again and we're going to do the same splitting function we did before. But now we're going to do it from top to bottom. So we're going to go ahead and click our layer, drag vertically until the dots touch the corners, take our bottom layer, drag downward until the dots touch the corners. And so now we're continually working on our edges. So now we just split that design in half. Now we have our heart edges starting to match up. So you can see the red edge is matching, this pink edge is matching. I forget they can't see my hand. Is it helpful for me to like draw? Okay, so let's go ahead and merge those two layers and now we can see our edges are starting to form. So the red is matching up with the red, the pink is matching up with the pink, and this green is matching up with this green. So now we're just going to fill in all the white space in the middle again. So let's add another layer. I'm going to pick this color, add one heart here, add maybe a small heart here in that little space. And let's use our red color and add a heart here. And maybe one more small heart. Okay, so this is looking full, but it looks like we have an empty space right here. But I don't want to just draw a heart close to it. I want that heart to be off, off the edge. So let's split this one more time. Let's merge those down, duplicate our layer. Now we're going to split these from side to side. So we'll do that one more time. Split function, split it until you hit your corners. Bottom layer, other way until you find the corners. And so now that little hole that was on, oops, now you merged these two down. Now that hole that we were looking at is now in the center, so we can easily fill that hole. I'm actually going to get rid of this part because I don't like how small it is. And we're actually going to make a bigger heart right there. So you can always continue to edit what's in the center of your pattern, but don't edit what's on the edges because those edges are already lining up. So we're going to come in and make another heart. Let's fill this whole, let's fill this whole side right here. Oops. Let's add a layer and we can fill this heart right here and let's do one more and fill this section right here. Okay, that looks like it's a pretty good pattern so far. Let's merge that down. Okay, when you feel like you're pretty close to being finished, now you can do that split edge movement over and over and over until you fill all the holes you want to fill. But I feel like our edges look pretty good. One great thing you can do to test your pattern to make sure that it repeats well is you can go to this website called bardobrush.com repeat and this is an artist that has made a repeating pattern tester. So we open that up in our internet browser. We're going to go back to Procreate and slide up with our finger, drag that browser over and you can drop it into your Procreate screen. And so now we're going to come to layers. We're going to click on our inserted image, drag it to the tester and add it to the tester. So this tester lets us look at our pattern and see how it is repeating. It looks like it's repeating quite seamlessly and there's not a lot of holes and it fills in really well. That's a really great way you can test your pattern. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed learning about making patterns with Procreate. If you are interested in making some money with your Cricut, please join the free webinar link down below. Thanks! Bye!