How to: DIY embroidered patch
By Navpreet Singh
@navthursday
I started embroidering my own patches after becoming more aware of the environmental and human impact of fast fashion. I’d taken an interest in learning to mend and upcycle my clothes and wanted to expand my skillset with embroidery. I have a few patches that I’ve bought and stitched onto my jacket and since having something that’s unique and personalised appeals to me, I decided to embroider my own patches.
I bought an embroidery starter kit online which covered the basic things you need to know about how to embroider and then followed YouTube tutorials to learn how to do different kinds of stitches.
I made my first patch during the Christmas break in 2019; it was of a heart with a dagger which I sewed onto my jacket. After spending time, effort and care on embroidering a piece, there is no better way to display it than wearing it, and since then I’ve been making patches whenever I can, like the example in this guide.
I use Adobe Illustrator to create my designs and often take inspiration from images I find online. For the design in this guide I took inspiration from an image I came across on Pinterest by tattoo artist @lmariera. If you’re just starting out, I recommend taking a look at flash tattoo designs as they’re relatively simple to embroider.
It takes me about 2-4 days to complete a patch depending on how detailed the design is and how much time I have. Although, if I had a whole day to embroider without distractions, then it would be possible for me to complete a patch in a day.
Here’s my step-by-step guide on how to create your own DIY embroidered patch using one of my own designs as the example. This guide is suited to people with basic embroidery skills and this design took me approximately 12 hours across 3 days to finish before adding it to my jacket. There’s a link to download my design if you’d like to follow along, as well as a printable version of this guide.
About Navpreet
Navpreet is a British-born Punjabi student studying Product Design Engineering at university. She listens to various forms of punk music and is currently learning to play the bass guitar and drums.