Free leopard print SVG patterns

Leopard, cheetah and jaguar

The three prints are easy to tell apart once you know what to look for. A leopard has rosettes: a ring of dark fur broken into two or three thick strokes, with small solid spots filling the gaps between rosettes. A jaguar’s rosettes are larger and have a spot in the middle. A cheetah has no rosettes at all, only solid spots. All three are here, each scattered so that no two marks come closer than a set gap.

Leopard print is nearly always used in one of two ways. Cut the spots on their own in black or brown vinyl and press them over a tan or gold base. Or fill a word or a shape with them: place the swatch over your shape in your cutting software, select both, and use Slice in Cricut Design Space, Intersect in Silhouette Studio or Path, Intersection in Inkscape.

Cutting and weeding the spots

A print is a few hundred small loose pieces, so it weeds slowly and it matters how small you go. Each design page lists its smallest spot. Keep that above about 1 mm for adhesive vinyl and 1.5 mm for iron-on: the large print can be cut at half size, and the small print should be cut at full size or bigger. Use transfer tape to move the whole pattern at once so the spacing holds.

The heart with the print cut out and the stencil panel are the other way round: one solid piece with spot-shaped holes. They suit card, wood and acrylic, where loose spots would be no use.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions