How to Make Repeating Pattern Designs!

How to Make Repeating Pattern Designs!

Learn how to easily make seamless repeating pattern designs using just a few simple supplies. 

This fun papercraft project is perfect for making wallpaper backgrounds for the phone, your own design on fabric, vinyl, Valentines or printables or just for fun!

Supplies Needed for Making Repeating Patterns:

• Paper
• Marker
• Tape
• Paper Cutter
• Scanner or Camera
• Photo Software (I use photoshop)
• Printer (if desired)

Step 1: Draw

Begin by drawing your favorite designs, art or images on a piece of paper. This can be as detailed as desired, but start with a simple one, so you know how it all comes together at the end.

The pattern can be colored if desired.

Doodle whatever makes your heart happy!

Have friends, classroom students, family members or other designers work together on one repeating pattern design.

Get creative and design your own fabric line!

Step 2: Cut

After the paper has been filled in with the desired design, use the paper cutter to cut the paper in half the vertical direction.

Step 3: Tape

Now flip the pages orientation so the side that was the left before becomes the right side.

Turn them over carefully and tape them down the seam.

Step 4: Cut Again

Now cut the taped paper in half the horizontal direction.

Step 5: Tape Again

Repeat the process as before and flip the paper pieces orientation.

Turn the paper over and tape them together down the backside as before.

Now you have a paper with a pretty big space in the center.

Step 6: Draw Again

Now add more to your pattern design by drawing in all the empty spaces of the paper.

It can be difficult to draw where the paper seams meet up, so go slow so you don't bump over the lines and make a mistake. 

Mistakes can be easily fixed with some white out or touched up during editing.

Once satisfied with the design, it's ready to duplicate!

This image, when duplicated will seamlessly line up to create a repeating pattern beautifully!

Step 7: Scan

Now use a scanner and scan the image. This can be done by taking a photograph, but sometimes the edges aren't quite square, so it may turn out a bit off.

Then size the image to the desired size. Copy it and paste it repeatedly.

The image will match up perfectly to itself. 

I did this very quick, so I didn't bother to line it up perfectly--but could have spent more time in editing to make it absolutely perfection.

Step 8: Print

Now the image can be colored, filled, printed, uploaded, etc!

I printed mine off so you can see how the pattern repeats. 

If you don't want to scale the image down in editing, you can just copy the original paper a bunch of times and tape them all together for a giant size repeating pattern design!

If you look closely, you can see some imperfections on how I lined up the image in editing, but it's pretty fun!

This is a fun project to do with kids too--they love seeing their art become a pattern! 

There are lots of ways you can use this fun technique--save it for reference!

That's it!

Now give this fun project a try and make a repeating pattern to just show you can do it!

It's so rewarding to see the pattern match up together!

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