Illustrator is ideal for textile design, and there are a lot of plugins out there which help you with the nitty gritty of repeats and so on. This program, Gliftex, while not being a plugin software, is compatile with Illustrator, it produces PostScript output which can be read by and modified in Illustrator. In fact any program which can read PostScript can read the output of Gliftex. This allows you to modify the designs in any way you want.

If you are serious about your designs you will need the PRO version, which not only has the PS output, but also has preset saving capabilities and larger raster image options.

Here are some example designs:

Quick recoloring (full color digital colorways) can be achived in seconds, for example the design above can quickly be recolored to get the design below:

Gliftex gives you an amazing mix of traditional and modern, look at this Paisley design for example:

Colorways in digital textile design.

How to create Paisley designs

How to make natural color schemes from images

Rose Window Design

How to create floral designs.

How to create mandala designs.

How to create Paisley designs.

Calico designs and ditsie designs.

Allover patterns of various types.