Hello! I'm Cristina from Elan Creative
Co and in this tutorial I will show you how to create striped patterns in
Illustrator. We are going to make a seamless horizontal striped pattern, a
vertical striped pattern, and a diagonal striped pattern. So open Illustrator and
let's get started! We are going to start with the horizontal stripes, so set your
Fill color and remove the Stroke. Then using the Rectangle tool, create your
first stripe. Change to the Selection tool, and while holding down the Alt key,
click on the first stripe and drag it down. Also, hold down the Shift key to
position it right under the first stripe. Now change the Fill color of the second
stripe, and select both of them, and group them by pressing Ctrl + G. This will be our
first pattern tile. To create the pattern, just select both shapes and then go to
Object > Pattern > Make. As you can see, we have a seamless pattern so just press
Done to save it. The new pattern will now appear in the Swatches panel. So I'll
select the pattern swatch, and then draw a shape. You now have a perfect seamless pattern. You can also apply to the a different shape like a circle. Now we
are going to create the second pattern. So select the shape and rotate it to
create vertical stripes. Right-click on it and go to Transform > Rotate, enter 90
degrees next to the angle and click OK. So we have our vertical pattern tile and
all we have to do is drag it into the Swatches panel.
If you want to test it, just select the pattern swatch and apply it to a shape. As
you can see, this is a perfectly seamless vertical stripes pattern. If you want
to change the color of the stripes, just double-click on the pattern swatch in the
Swatches panel, and using the Selection tool, select one of the stripes. Apply a
new color swatch from the Swatches panel then click Done to save it. As you can
see, we have a different color applied to the circle and a different color here in
the Swatches panel. So now I'm going to delete these shapes and we are going to
create a diagonal pattern. If you want to create a diagonal striped pattern, it's
important to have a square artboard. So if you want to change the size of your
artboard, just click on the Artboard tool and enter a new size here. For this
pattern, I'm going to use the Line Segment tool. So select the Line Segment
tool, remove the Fill color, and set a Stroke color. I'm also going to set a
larger stroke, like 40 points. I think that's enough.
So while holding down the Shift key, draw a line. The line has to be bigger than
your artboard. We are going to use the Rotate tool again to rotate it to a 45
degrees angle. So go to Transform > Rotate and enter 45 here. Click OK to save.
Now move the line to the middle of your artboard. We need to use a line
that's larger than the diagonal line. So if your line is larger, then move it
here in the upper left corner. Now I'm going to select this and go to Object >
Transform > Move. I want to move this line from the upper left corner to the lower
right corner. To do that, I'm going to enter 12 inches for the horizontal
position and 12 inches for the vertical. My artboard is 12 by 12 inches so you have
to enter the width and height of your artboard. Then press Copy to move the line.
We are going to create a diagonal pattern by using the Blend tool. Select
both lines and then go to Object > Blend > Make. You can also use the Blend tool
from the toolbar. Now your pattern might not look like this one so double-click
on the Blend tool to open the Blend Options. Make sure the Spacing is set
to Specified Steps. Also enter an odd number of steps. You can enter any number
you want. Check the preview box to see the changes. But it's very important that the
number is odd because you need a line that passes through the middle of your
artboard. So you need this diagonal line here. And if you enter an even number you
won't have it and the pattern won't be seamless. So press OK to save it. Next we
are going to crop this shape. But before that we have to expand it. So go to
Object > Expand. Make sure that all the boxes are checked and press OK. Now we
have 11 lines that have a stroke applied to them. So I'm going to go to Object >
Expand again and press OK. As you can see, now we have a fill color and no stroke.
The next step is to crop the pattern. I'm going to create a rectangle that's the
same size as my artboard and then I'm going to make sure that it's perfectly
aligned to the artboard. If you can't see the Align panel, you can open it from Window > Align. So select both shapes, and using the Pathfinder tool, you can open them
from Window > Pathfinder, crop the shape. Just press the Crop button. As you
can see this is our pattern tile. You can save the pattern by dragging it to the
Swatches panel or you can add a background to it. Our swatch now has a
transparent background. So let's add a background. I'm going to switch to the
Rectangle tool again and choose a different fill color. Then I will create
another rectangle that's the same size as my artboard. We need to align it again
and then go to Arrange and Send to back. So now I will select both shapes and
drag them to the Swatches panel. So let's select the pattern and draw a rectangle.
So there you have it, this is a seamless diagonal striped pattern. So as you can
see, today we've made a horizontal striped pattern, a vertical striped
pattern, and a diagonal striped pattern. Thank you so much for watching! I hope
you've enjoyed this tutorial, and if you want to see more tutorials, please
subscribe to my channel or visit my blog. More tutorials are coming soon!