Creating A Christmas Jumper Pattern

What I knew before?

Beforehand, I knew how to draw basic shape in illustrator and also draw freehand using the brush and pencil tools, I had used the fill tool to fill in areas of my drawing as well as the pipette to copy exact colours from an original image to transfer into my own drawing. The basic commands I was aware of were holding alt to my continuous copies of the shape and cmd+D to duplicate a shape further.

What was the task?

Using a tutorial, I followed each step to create a pattern fit for a Christmas jumper using a repeating pattern.
Firstly I had to create my stitch shape my merging two ovals and locking this shape onto the grid. I then chose my dark background colours for the stitch pattern to go on top of. I locked the background so that it wouldn't move throughout the process. Here is the first line of stitches on my background:

Using the Cmd+D shortcut, I duplicated the stitch over the whole background. For the dark red background, the stitches are bright red, and for the dark green background I made the stitches a brighter shade of green.

After using the pain fill tool to create my design, I has one complete tile. Next, I made it into a pattern so that it would follow continuously. My pattern then become it's own swatch that I used to dil a rectangle to show my final design, that you can see at the top of this post.

What I know now?

• How to merge two shapes so they act as one.
• When and when not to use a grid to make sure the pattern is correctly aligned.
• Grouping and ungrouping sections of the design to isolate different sections of colour and pattern.
• Use the paint fill to select individual shapes to fill and create a pattern.
• How to convert my design into a pattern that can be used as a swatch to fill new objects.