Allover patterns (for textiles and backgrounds) of various types.

There are many sorts of "allover" patterns: Allover Nondirectional, Allover One-Directional, Allover Packed, Allover Set, Allover Tossed and Allover Two-Directional. Each of these types are illustrated below. An important thing about allover designs is that they are seamless, thus ensuring that they can be repeated without showing the "join".

Allover Packed

Packing the objects (often floral) of the pattern so close together that you cannot see the background gives a rich sumptuous feel, as you can see in the two designs above.

Allover Set

Allover set is a formal sometimes rigid arrangement of objects on a grid pattern. Though the basic layout is square based the objects can add variation and life to the design at the detail level.

Allover Tossed

The idea with allover tossed is that of objects that have been scattered (or randomly tossed) onto the material, giving it a lively dynamic feel.

Allover Two-Directional

With these allover two-directional designs a quite formal design in horizontal and vertical directions is made dynamic by the detail components of the image.

Allover One Directional

With allover one directional designs the image or textile has a deffinite "up direction", as you can clearly see in the images above. Place them at the wrong angle and they become diagonal allover designs, which are rather harder to wear or use as backgrounds!

Allover Non-Directional

Allover non-directional designs do not have a "preferred" direction and have a rich look to them which makes them useful in bold areas of design.

The program which created these allover patterns is called Gliftex and costs $29.95. There is a free demo available, as well as some tutorials on this web site, see the top right of this page.

Rose Window Design Examples

How to create floral rose window designs.

How to create floral designs.

Ditsie and calico designs

Mandala Designs

Seamless Paisley Drawing

Help Index

"This is a fantastic design program which produces great images with just a few mouse clicks."

"The program has dozens of choices, for forms, colorways, and how their are interpreted by the program. There must be billions of combinations that can be arranged and created."

"Gliftex is the ONE program that allows you to control and tweek and personalize the individual settings for color, form and how they interact to build truly unique decorative designs."