Make Repeat Tile from a Pattern Fill Swatch in Illustrator - Upload to Spoonflower - no lines!!

Exporting pattern designs from Illustrator to Spoonflower can sometimes leave you with lines in your repeat. Here’s my method for expanding pattern fill swatches to make a single tile of my pattern that I can export to Spoonflower without worry. I like to use stacked fills in the Appearance panel to create my different colorways, and then I expand those fills, here's how:
0:00 Introduction
1:00 Drag the pattern fill away from the Swatches panel to expand
2:00 Ungroup, and select the bounding shape to add the background color
2:50 Make an artboard from a copy of the bounding shape
3:30 Make the solid background shape slightly larger than the artboard
4:00 Export using Save for Web at 150 ppi use a calculator to do the math
6:11 Looking at the pattern in Photoshop - View - Pattern Preview, to show the difference when you add the extra margin of background, so you don't see white lines or soft pixels
7:00 The pattern tile in Spoonflower
In this quick tutorial, I talk about 150 ppi resolution, using Save for Web, expanding vector art, and other topics for pattern designers.
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All content by Laura Coyle

[@moroco.design]

So useful tips, Laura! Thanks!!

[@LauraCoyle]

You're so welcome!

[@lilapiz]

Very helpful! Does anyone know where to find illustrator files with repeat tile templates already configured?

[@lesliegoldstein3725]

Thank you!

[@LauraCoyle]

You bet!

[@michellecorum2097]

I did this and thought the image should still be scalable afterwards. The image I saved would not scale. Is this the way it is supposed to be or should it be scalable? And I thought you needed to upload images like this into Spoonflower as jpgs? I would appreciate your opinion or thoughts. Thanks Laura!

[@LauraCoyle]

Images are pixel-based and so you have to be more careful about enlarging them. You can export images from Illustrator at the size you need, so you don't have to scale them afterwards. Here's another video that may help: ua-cam.com/video/FHlcg9sBqx8/v-deo.html I think Spoonflower accepts jpg, png and tif