Create an Embroidered Patch Style With Adobe Illustrator

What You’ll Be Creating

Bring a little bit of nostalgia to your designs with a set of embroidered patch style pictograms. In this embroidery effect Illustrator tutorial, you’ll learn how to layer fills, strokes, and special effects in the Appearance panel to create a complex embroidered patch image using just one circle and a few shapes. Let’s begin!

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What if you prefer to watch video tutorials to learn how to make embroidery patches? We’ve got you covered. You can watch this new video from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel to learn how to make embroidered patches in Illustrator:

What You’ll Learn in This Embroidery Effect Illustrator Tutorial

How to make an embroidered patch in Illustrator
How to create a path border
How to create a stitched border
How to create a fabric pattern
How to create an embroidered logo

1. How to Create a New Document and Set Up a Grid

Let’s start this Illustrator embroidery effect tutorial by setting up a new document. Hit Control-N to create a new document. Select Pixels from the Units drop-down menu, set the Width and Height to 850 px, and then click that Advanced Options button. Select RGB for the Color Mode and set the Raster Effects to Screen (72 ppi), and then click the Create button.

Enable the Grid (View > Show Grid or Control-“) and Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid or Shift-Control-“). You will need a grid every 1 px, so simply go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid, and enter 1 in the Gridline every box and 1 in the Subdivisions box. Try not to get discouraged by all that grid—it will make your work easier, and keep in mind that you can easily enable or disable it using the Control-“ keyboard shortcut.

You can learn more about Illustrator’s grid system in this short tutorial from Andrei Stefan: Understanding Adobe Illustrator’s Grid System.

You should also open the Info panel (Window > Info) for a live preview with the size and position of your shapes. Don’t forget to set the unit of measurement to pixels from Edit > Preferences > Units. All these options will significantly increase your work speed.

2. How to Make the Fabric Fill

Step 1

Our embroidery Illustrator effect needs a fabric fill. Focus on your toolbar and pick the Rectangle Tool (M), and then focus on the color settings. Select the stroke and remove the color, and then double-click the fill and set it to yellow.

Move to your artboard and simply click and drag to create a 4 x 1 px shape—the grid and the Snap to Grid feature should make things easier.

Switch to the Selection Tool (V), hold down the Alt key and drag a copy of your rectangle 4 px to the right, as shown in the second image. Keep this new shape selected and replace the yellow fill with a blue one.

Reselect your yellow shape, remember to hold down the Alt key, and drag a copy 8 px to the right, as shown in the third image.

Step 2

Keep using the Selection Tool (V) to add more copies of our blue and yellow rectangles, as shown in the following image.

Step 3

Keep using the Selection Tool (V) and hold down the Shift key to select all your yellow shapes.

Open the Gradient panel (Window > Gradient) and click that Linear Gradient button to replace the yellow fill with a linear gradient.

Set the Angle to 0 degrees and then move to the gradient colors. Double-click the left one, change the color mode to RGB and replace the color with R=108 G=90 B=76, move to the left one and change the color to R=147 G=123 B=99, and then click on the gradient bar to add a third gradient slider. Select it and set the Location to 55%, and then replace the color with R=225 G=186 B=145.

Step 4

Using the Selection Tool (V), select all those blue rectangles and again click that Linear Gradient button from the Gradient panel.

Make sure that the Angle is set to 0 degrees and then select the gradient sliders one by one to replace the existing colors with the ones shown in the following image.

Step 5

Reselect the Rectangle Tool (M), create an 8 x 4 px shape, and place it exactly as shown in the following image.

Keep it selected and remove the fill color (which will make your shape invisible), and then press Shift-Control-[ to send this rectangle to the back.

Step 6

Using the Selection Tool (V), select all your shapes (including that invisible rectangle) and simply drag them into the Swatches panel (Window > Swatches) to save them as a pattern.