Photoshop Tutorial - Repeating Houndstooth Pattern

Seems like houndstooth patterns are all the rage these days. I had never really looked too closely at how this pattern was constructed, and was surprised by what I found. Houndstooth looks at first glance like a fairly complex diagonally-oriented shape repeated over and over. When I set out to break it down and recreate it in Photoshop though, I realized that the repeating pattern is really just two solid blocks and two diagonally-striped blocks, alternating in such a way that it creates the illusion of a complex repeating shape.

Here's a tutorial on making your own houndstooth pattern from scratch. The tutorial was written for PSCS3, but the pattern itself can be replicated in any graphic editor. Have fun!