licence

Use the patterns freely

Every pattern on Shapes of Blue is free to use, for any purpose. Commercial or personal, changed or exactly as it comes, on screen, in print, or on things you make and sell. You do not need to ask, pay, or credit anyone. If you would like to credit the source anyway, “pattern from Shapes of Blue” is plenty.

To be plain about the case that comes up most often: yes, you may take one of these patterns, leave it exactly as it is, print it as large as you like and sell it. That is not a loophole in the licence. It is the point of it.

the one limit

The patterns may not be passed on as a collection of patterns. No SVG packs, no clip-art sets, no pattern libraries, no wallpaper apps, and no generators or tools built to produce these patterns for other people — free or paid, and whether or not they are credited.

The line is between using a pattern and redistributing the supply of them. Sell a hundred prints and you are using them, which is what they are here for. Publish the files as a set for other people to take, and you are not: at that point you are running this site, and there is only room for one of those.

what the licence does not cover

The site itself, its code, the generators behind the patterns, the background notes and the recipes that describe them. Those remain the work of their author, as do the name Shapes of Blue and its wordmark.

But read the notes and the recipes as much as you like, and learn whatever you can from them — that is what they were written for. Work out how a pattern is put together and write your own program from what you understood: that is not copying, it is how every one of these was made in the first place. Only the code itself is off limits.

no warranty

The patterns are offered exactly as they are, with no promise that any of them is fit for any particular purpose. Use your own judgement, and take your own responsibility for what you make with them.

the small print that is not small

Shapes of Blue is made by Hans Henrik Heming. This licence covers the patterns as published on shapesofblue.dk, and this is version 1.0, September 2026. If it is ever changed, anything you took under this version stays under this version — a licence that can be tightened after the fact is not a licence anyone should rely on.