The Art of Plaid: Create Beautiful Digital Patterns

Creating plaid patterns may look simple, but producing polished, seamless designs requires an understanding of layers, repetition, color, and digital pattern workflows. Perfect Plaid: Design Easy, Fun Plaid Patterns in Procreate, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator explores these fundamentals through practical demonstrations across three popular creative applications.

Taught by illustrator and surface pattern designer Carrie Cantwell, the class guides students through creating plaid designs in Adobe Illustrator, Procreate, and Photoshop. The approximately one-hour class combines demonstrations with a hands-on project, giving learners the opportunity to create and share their own plaid pattern.

• Aspiring surface pattern designers — Learn how plaid can become part of a broader pattern-design toolkit.
• Illustrators — Explore another versatile pattern style that can complement existing artwork.
• Graphic designers — Practice creating structured, repeatable patterns using professional design software.
• Procreate users — Follow a workflow that combines Procreate with Photoshop for textured plaid effects.
• Adobe users — Learn plaid-making techniques in both Illustrator and Photoshop.
• Creative beginners with software experience — The class is listed as intermediate, making some familiarity with the featured applications useful.

• Create seamless plaid repeat pattern blocks.
• Build plaid patterns in Adobe Illustrator.
• Draw textured plaid designs in Procreate.
• Refine Procreate artwork in Photoshop.
• Create plaid using Photoshop alone.
• Experiment with colors, textures, scale, and blending effects.
• Prepare a finished pattern for creative applications.

Perfect Plaid takes a focused approach to one particularly useful area of surface pattern design: creating repeatable plaid patterns. Rather than concentrating on general pattern-design theory, Carrie Cantwell gets into the practical process of constructing plaid and demonstrates several different software workflows.

The class begins with a short introduction to plaid’s history before moving into the creative process. This provides some useful context before the technical demonstrations begin. The main lessons then explore three different approaches: Adobe Illustrator, Procreate combined with Photoshop, and Photoshop on its own.

The Illustrator lesson is particularly useful for understanding the structure behind a seamless repeat. Cantwell demonstrates setting up a square artboard, organizing background and stripe layers, positioning stripes, and duplicating elements so that artwork touching one edge continues seamlessly on the opposite edge. The demonstration also covers practical considerations such as color mode, resolution, and layer organization.

The Procreate and Photoshop workflow takes a more textured approach. Students first draw the plaid in Procreate before bringing the artwork into Photoshop for further processing. This allows for a more organic appearance than a purely geometric plaid and introduces blending and texture techniques that can give the finished pattern additional visual character.

One particularly convenient aspect of the class is that an iPad is not required. A separate lesson demonstrates how to create plaid entirely in Photoshop, including working with individual stripe layers and using Photoshop’s tools to maintain straight, repeatable elements.

The class also includes a hands-on project where students create and share their own plaid pattern. Students can use Procreate, Photoshop, Illustrator, or even another software application, and they can present the repeat block, the complete pattern, or a product mockup. This flexibility makes the project suitable for experimenting with different styles and workflows.

Another appealing element is the connection to real-world surface pattern design. Cantwell explains that she sells patterns on products and licenses her artwork to companies including Target, Wayfair, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Her broader professional background includes illustration, surface pattern design, and education, with a BFA in Graphic Design and more than two decades of experience using Adobe products.

Overall, the class is compact but practical. Its biggest strength is the variety of workflows: students aren’t restricted to one application or one visual style. Whether you prefer clean geometric plaid in Illustrator, textured artwork created with Procreate and Photoshop, or a Photoshop-only workflow, the class provides a route to the same fundamental result—a seamless plaid repeat pattern.

Perfect Plaid is a focused, practical class for learning how to construct plaid repeat patterns across Procreate, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Its strongest appeal is the variety of workflows and the emphasis on producing an actual repeat pattern rather than simply discussing pattern theory.

The course is particularly well suited to intermediate learners, illustrators, graphic designers, and aspiring surface pattern designers who already have some familiarity with digital creative software. Beginners to the individual applications may need additional instruction before following every technique comfortably, but learners with basic software experience should find the demonstrations accessible and useful.