How to Sew Patches on Letter Jackets

Varsity jackets are often worn by high school students who play sports.

Letter jackets are great for showing off school spirit, as well as your individual personality and interests. The most common patches to sew onto a letter jacket include letters that represent your school, numbers that represent the number on your particular sport's uniform and school symbols. Some people even sew full artistic works onto their letter jackets. If you learn to sew on the patches yourself, you can change the patches easily, and you can add patches whenever you want to.

Instructions

1. Unwrap your letter from the plastic it came in. If you are customizing your jacket, cut out the shapes you want to include on your letter jackets from felt material. This might be letters, numbers, symbols or even words.

2. Lay out your jackets and place the felt patches over the jacket. Arrange the patches until you're satisfied with how it looks.

3. Use safety pins to keep the patches in place. This will prevent them from slipping out of place while you're sewing.

4. Thread your needle with the same color as the felt of the first patch you plan to sew on. Cut off a long length of thread and tie a knot at the end to keep the end of the thread anchored at the first stitch. Make the thread long, and you can cut off the end when you have finished sewing.

5. Put the needle first through the felt and then through the fabric of the jacket. The felt should cover the area of the jacket where the needle comes back through. Pull the thread tight.

6. Loop back around and again, place the needle through the felt, into the fabric of the jacket and back out again. Note that the thread is never coming out the other end of the jacket. Be sure to keep your stitches and even width apart, usually about 1/16 of an inch.

7. Repeat your stitches until you've sewn on the entire patch.

8. Rethread your needle with thread that's the same color as the next patch you plan to sew on. Repeat the same sewing process until that patch is completely sewn on, and continue the full process until all the patches are sewn on.

References

• Varsity Jackets: Creating Good-Looking Varsity Jackets By Sewing Them On Yourself