Indian folk pattern generator

Five crafts, one grid. Choose bandhani, ajrakh, rangoli, Warli or Madhubani, how many motifs fit across the tile, how rich each one is and how thick the lines, and export a seamless pattern as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

Rows of small rings of cream and gold dots with red centers on a crimson ground, separated by dotted lines in the manner of bandhani

Five crafts of India

Bandhani is tie-dye from Gujarat and Rajasthan: the cloth is pinched and tied with thread at thousands of points before dyeing, and each tie leaves a small ring or dot of the original color. Ajrakh is the block-printed cloth of Kutch and Sindh in indigo and madder red, with a lattice of diamonds, rosettes and small stars. Rangoli is the floor art made at the doorstep for festivals, with lotus flowers and dots, drawn in colored powder or rice flour. Warli painting comes from the tribal villages of Maharashtra: white figures made of triangles and circles, drawn on red earthen walls, dancing hand in hand. Madhubani painting, from Bihar, fills every space with fish, flowers and birds in double outlines, with fine hatching and dots.

Ornamatic draws general versions of these in the spirit of the crafts. They are not copies of any one cloth or wall painting.

How the generator builds them

Bandhani is a field of dot rings around a central dot, laid in staggered rows with dotted lines between them. Ajrakh crosses diagonal lines to form diamonds, with a rosette of petals and a ring in each cell and dots at the crossings. Rangoli is a lotus with two rows of petals in each cell and a dot at every corner. Warli is rows of figures made of a circle head and two triangles, linking arms along the row, over a zigzag border. Madhubani is rows of fish swimming in turn left and right, each with scale dots, a double outline and an eye, between double rules, with small rosettes between them.

The motifs sit on a grid with a whole number of cells per repeat, so the tile repeats exactly. Richness changes the number of dots or petals, and in Warli the number of rows.