Mushrooms repeat pattern

This is my first felt tip repeat pattern, and its a first draft. It's not perfect, but I'm getting there. I used my retro mushroom picture and cut it up in Photoshop to make it repeat. Its missing the circles in the original which seems to remove some of the vibrancy and movement. The red of the large mushroom creates stripes across the repeat too which needs an adjustment.

1960's flower pattern sketch

A page from my sketchbook exploring 1960's styled retro flower patterns in hot pink and black. Hopefully, I'll develop this in to a digital pattern and have fabric printed from this for my next major quilting project. I've just got to sort out my illustrator skills before then!

I've got some really satisfying felt tips on the go, from Pentel. They leave just the right amount of felt-tip striping to keep large blocky areas interesting - like the black areas on some of the flowers.

Retro mushrooms & toadstools

I really want to create a repeating pattern based on this felt tip sketch I did in the summer. I've not been having much luck getting Adobe Illustrator to cooperate with me on the pattern making thing though. It seems ridiculously complex, and like there should be an easy way to do this sort of thing.

Making patterns is so much harder than I EVER imagined! I have so much more respect for fabric designers having tried to do this myself. I'm still looking for advice and tutorials on pattern making, so if anyone can point me in the direction of any good resources, that would be great. I'll post any patterns I do make that don't totally suck if and when they happen ;-)