Andean and Aztec weaving pattern generator

Patterns built from stepped squares. Choose a Navajo diamond, a chakana, an Aztec zigzag or a Huichol rosette, how fine the weave is and how wide the bands are, and export a seamless pattern as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

Maroon, black and gold nested diamonds with serrated edges on a cream ground in a Navajo-style weave

Diagonals on a grid

A loom lays threads at right angles, so a diagonal can only be made of steps. The weavers of the Andes, of Mesoamerica and of the American Southwest turned that limit into a style. A Navajo rug sets nested diamonds of strong colors, some of them with serrated edges that seem to vibrate. The chakana, the stepped cross of the Andes, appears in Inca cloth and stonework. Stepped zigzags run through Aztec and Mixtec borders, and the Huichol of western Mexico make rosettes of colored yarn or beads.

Ornamatic draws general versions of these in the spirit of the craft. They are not copies of any one weaving, and sacred and clan designs of living communities are not reproduced.

How the generator builds them

Each pattern is a small bitmap of square pixels on a grid, with the foreground colors layered as bands around a center. Rows of equal pixels are merged into single rectangles, so the exported shapes touch and there are no hairline gaps between the pixels.

The grid has a fixed number of pixels per repeat, so the pattern repeats exactly when it is tiled. The pixel size slider makes the same design coarser or finer.