Creating Custom Patterns

You can make your own patterns in Inkscape. A pattern can consist of a texture (i.e. a raster image like *.jpg or *.png that you imported), a group, a path, shape objects, …

Select the object that you would like use as a pattern, and then tell the software to turn it into a pattern via Object ‣ Pattern ‣ Objects to Pattern. Your pattern will appear on the canvas, applied to a rectangle. It will now also be available in the Fill and Stroke dialog, next to the stock patterns that come with Inkscape.

The Pattern to Objects option in the same menu allows you to do the opposite operation. This is useful when you want to modify a pattern, or want to extract an object from it.

Your first patterns may look a little surprising to you. When you start designing beautiful seamless patterns, you are engaging in the art of illustration.

This octopus image is using a custom fish pattern.