Tartan and woven pattern generator

Weave fabric patterns thread by thread. Pick tartan, gingham, houndstooth, herringbone, a basket weave or a twill, edit the stripe sequence and colours, and export a seamless tile as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

Blue and pink tartan with dark crossing stripes and a visible twill texture

How are woven patterns made?

A woven fabric is two sets of threads crossing at right angles: the warp runs along the fabric and the weft runs across it. Colours come from the order of coloured threads in each set (the sett), and the texture from the weave, the rule that decides where the weft goes over the warp and where under.

Plain weave alternates over and under on every thread. Twill shifts the pattern by one thread per row and makes diagonal ribs; tartan is usually woven in twill. Gingham is a plain weave with equal stripes in both directions, and houndstooth is a twill where two colours alternate in small groups.

How the generator builds them

Ornamatic works like a loom. It lays out the warp and weft from the stripe sequence you give it, then decides for every crossing which thread shows on top, following the chosen weave. The repeat is the length of the stripe sequence, so the tile joins seamlessly.

The result can be drawn flat, as plain squares of colour, or with visible threads and a gap between them.

What you can adjust

Pattern — tartan, gingham, houndstooth, herringbone, basket, twill, satin or plain.
Weave — plain, twill 2/2, 3/1 or 2/1, broken twill, herringbone, basket 2/2 or 3/3, satin.
Stripe sequence — the warp as colour×threads, for example 1×8 0×2 2×4, and a separate weft if you want an asymmetric check.
Style — flat colour or visible threads, with an adjustable gap.
Colours — any palette; 0 in the sequence is the background.