Pattern Swatches in Illustrator
Pattern Swatches are a hidden gem in illustrator. You can use them to quickly fill shapes with patterns and illustrations. Here's a short tutorial using a t-shirt design.
A simple example
In this quick example of using pattern swatches we are going to use a t-shirt design. Pattern swatches allow you to quickly fill shapes with patterns and even illustrations. I've drawn a simple t-shirt on the canvas using the pen tool.
Example one - stripes
To create a pattern swatch you simply draw your pattern or shape as you normally would on another part of the canvas.
Draw two rectangles on the canvas and then fill them with two different colours. I've chosen blue and white. Then select both shapes and drag them into the Swatches box.
If you can't see the swatches box go to Window > Swatches. You should see the pattern that you dragged into the Swatches box now available. To use the pattern select the Object you want to fill using the selection tool (v) and then click on the pattern you just dragged in. If everything went well you should now have a striped t-shirt.
Example two - flower power
The real power of this feature is that you can quickly fill shapes or objects with illustrations. Let's say we are going to a 60's flower power party and we want to design a t-shirt for the occassion. Using Pattern Swatches we can draw a flower, drag it into the swatches and then quickly fill the t-shirt. Easy.
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What's this?
This is a journal entry written by George Ornbo, a web designer who lives and works in London, England.
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Jun 25 2007
Great tip!
Jul 6 2007
thats v.nice
Jul 12 2007
This is really helpful! I cool trick!
Thank you!
Jul 18 2007
Really nice!! Another good and simple tutorial by you….can you give some more complx tutorials please.
Aug 8 2007
This has been a great help thanks!
I’m also trying to fill a shape (a jigsaw puzzle piece) with a photograph. I dragged the photo into the swatches panel, and used it as a fill, but it’s repeats within the shape - I just want a straight fill. Could you help?
Thanks!
Aug 9 2007
@Nikki - would an opacity mask do the trick?
Oct 23 2007
@Nikki - Use a mask. Place your vector puzzle piece on top of the image. Select both the puzzle piece and the image. Go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make (Ctrl/Command 7 is the key command)
Dec 6 2007
wow, really great help
thx u very much
Mar 20 2008
Hi great tuto !!
You can also apply some beautiful swatches pattern like : http://onepattern.com/us/
Enjoy
Sep 15 2008
Nice tip thanks a lot :D
Oct 3 2008
Thank you so much - I’ve been using Illustrator for years and never knew how to do this (or that the possibility even existed). THANK YOU!
Nov 5 2008
Extremely helpful! A life—saver!
Jan 22 2009
great tip - I’ve been using Illustrator for over a year and still couldn’t work out how to do this - I’m an old FreeHand user and it was so easy then, but moving over to Illustrator I found some of the things difficult and assumed this would be too! I was thinking I had to create a graphic style like the library fills they have… this is so much easier! I’m going to tell all my cartographic colleagues about this one!