How To Make Patches

If you’re into DIY and crafts, you know that patches are an obvious go-to to decorate garments, branding, and upcycling old clothes. And the good news is, you don’t have to empty your pockets to buy them. You can make handcraft patches in your “creative corner” at home. It is the perfect way to express your personality, have fun, and get creative while working under a budget. Let’s understand the simple steps you can follow to make different custom-made patches.

Back in the 1900s, embroidered patches (referred to as crests back then) were on almost every fabric. It’s not surprising that they’ve been around for centuries. Their uses are versatile, and they look great on nearly everything. If you’re tired of spending a lot of bucks to get someone else’s patch designs, let me help you create one.

If you don’t have a digitized design, draw the one in mind on a piece of paper. Start off with basic designs before you get a hang of hand embroidering. The design can be simple art, numbers, letters or symbols with less than 3 colors to keep it simple but pretty.

If you are struggling to come up with ideas, Pinterest or Google are a pool for inspiration. Some great designs for beginners are cherries, a smiley face, simple words, and simple graphics. It pays to come up with a good and original idea for your patch especially if it is going on the market shelves. Visually appealing designs get more eyeballs, which is something we all want for our artwork.

Once you get the design right, digitize it. You can alter pre-made pieces, or make one that suits your personality better from scratch, on graphic design tools such as Canva. If you're using an embroidery machine, it won’t read the designs fed to it directly from graphic design tools such as Photoshop. You’ll have to convert them into production-ready files in a format the machine can read.

If you want to trace the outline of your design, download the file in PNG format before printing it for the best quality.

Now that the design is ready, what will you embroider the patch on? Fabrics that best hold up to embroidery are twills, cotton, and felt. Patch twill is 100% polyester, and can be used immediately after purchase with not much preparation. Cut the felt slightly bigger size than the patch for better handling. A good reference point is the embroidery hoop: it should cover all the felt.

Use a pencil or marker to sketch the design on the spot that you’ll be embroidering. Tracing along the outlines ensures you have an accurate size and reduces the error margin, especially for complex designs. This can be done by placing the felt on a tracing board making the outline translucent.

If you don’t have a light board, there are different ways to recreate the outline. Placing the felt against a flashlight or a window works the same. The idea is to have stronger light against the felt and design. And if none of that is your cup of tea, carefully freestyle the sketch.

For all my embroidery projects, I like using a satin stitch. Just like any other sewing process, it starts by making a knot at the end of the thread. Then, stick the needle through vertically going back and forth in opposite directions, filling the blank spaces on the outline. The trick is to not pull the entire length of the thread because short-length threads will make the embroidery feel tight and pull in.

Keep stitching until you fill up all the space in your design, switching up thread colors when needed.

Whenever you want to change threads to change color or have finished sewing, split the thread at the backside of the design into an equal number of strands and tie a knot pushing it as close as you can to the felt using your finger. Snip off the excess very close to the knot using a pair of scissors.

To embroider the outlines, I like to use a backstitch.

After all the gaps in the outline are filled, trim the felt all around the patch leaving a ¼ inch of it. Use a satin stitch to create another outline along this leftover part (stitch the same way you filled the first outline). Remember to get as close as you can to the stitches on the outline when sewing and make the threads a bit tight.

At this point, the patch is ready and you can attach a heating bond if you want to use adhesive to attach it to fabric later on.

Draw an outline of the patch on the smooth side of the heating bond using a pencil or marker and cut it out. Press the rough side on the backside of the embroidered patch using a heat press or iron-on. After the heat bond is well adhered to the patch, it is ready to be used on a garment.

Enjoy your embroidery patch!

Sewn patches are the easiest to make because they don’t require technical sewing techniques, and the designs you can make with them are endless. They are used to hide the holes on clothes, or simply make them feel more personal and prettier.

You can use any fabric for the patch, you just have to bring out your creative juices. However, it is recommended to start with a simple design or shape. For beginners, shape the patch to a square or rectangle to avoid a complicated linework.

Place the patch on the fabric and hold it in place using sewing pins so it does not move around when you are sewing.

Unravel the amount of thread you’ll require to sew in one go and stick it through the needle. Tie a knot on the end to secure it on one side of the patch after your first stitch. Start stitching from one corner first, just to ease the process of handling the corners. I prefer using running stitches on lighter fabrics, a backstitch for heavier ones, and a blanket stitch for fraying edges.

If you’re using a sewing machine, set it to a tight zigzag pattern and start sewing from your longest edge.

If you are sewing a cloth patch with borders, you should sew along the borders. If it doesn’t have any borders, sew an inch away from the edges. If you sew along the edges, it will eventually fray with time and come off, needing a complete redo.

NB: On the patch's corners, pivot your needle to pick up on the angle and direction of the next stitches to avoid bunched stitches.

For borderless patches, you have to trim the extra fabric around the edges, especially if you have more than an inch left after the sewing line, after which you are done with the patch!

Making patches using transfer paper is a good option if you have zero artistic skills and want a cute patch.

Here, you are allowed to go rogue with the designs. They can be as complex as they need to be because all you need to do is cut around the shape. Just like embroidery patches, the design can be made from scratch, by editing pre-made templates on graphic design tools, or by downloading design inspirations from Pinterest or Google.

Play around with different colors, shades, images, fonts, and graphics to come up with something you really like.

You need to layer these patches for a better visual appeal. Use different colors for different layers to best differentiate between them. Although the cutting machine does not necessarily use the colors, they help you tell the actual size and style of the layers on the design. Different colors also help you know what layer is being cut and where to place it, so use the same colors for the same layer level if you are making multiple patch designs.

Before printing, download the design in PNG format (best for printing complex designs).

Load the designs on Cricut and adjust the settings to cut. Make sure the suede is facing down before you start cutting.

If you used the kiss-cut option, you need to weed out the extra vinyl. After weeding, use iron-on to press the vinyl on the fabric, then the fabric on the suede (base material). Place a piece of cloth under the iron-on to protect everything under it from excess heat when pressing.

Peel the vinyl from the backing paper and artistically position it facing up on the right spot on the fabric. Use a squeegee to apply some pressure on the parchment paper, starting from the middle and working your way outwards. When everything is well-adhered, carefully peel the parchment paper, ensuring nothing is left stuck.

Your transfer paper patch is now all done and looks good.

After mastering the basics of making different patches, you can now feel free to experiment with different fabrics and more complex designs.