Recently I saw a great tutorial on how to use Illustrator to make a seamless pattern. Rather than write our own, here is the link to the tutorial I got from Shutterstock:

http://www.shutterstock.com/newsletter/100/article3.html

Use stock Illustrator symbols to quickly show clients (or your friends!) what a logo or image would like on clothing.

Go to your symbol libraries (if you need help with this refer back to PART ONE: “A Quick Introduction to Illustrator Symbols”), choose the Fashion Library and add the desired pieces of clothing to your Symbols Palette.

Drag and drop the symbol(s) to your artboard. For this quick exercise I am going to add our logo to a hat and a t-shirt, so I have dragged one of each symbol into the document.

I am using a single instance of each symbol here, so I can simply Expand (Object > Expand) the shape if I want to update the color or add a stroke. (I will go over how to edit the actual Symbol in a subsequent part of this series.) Then just add the art or text that you want to appear on your clothing item and you are done!

Here is a little Adobe software trick that not all new users know…

If you often use arrow keys to move objects one pixel at a time – you can hold down the SHIFT key while pressing the arrow key to nudge the object TEN pixels at a time.