We have big plans! Because for the next two years, we will upcycle, restyle, and repair 100 t-shirts with FOR KEEPS. Inspire you to give a new life to an old t-shirt. Turn it into a sustainable statement. I wanted to patch up t-shirt #15, with a message!
Do you remember our upcycled t-shirt #4? It was a few embroidered patches on a baby shirt. Check it out here! It looked very cute (IMO ;), but it took several people a few hours to embroider those. So the second plan was to turn vintage embroidery into a patch. Would that work? Yes, you can see for yourself on t-shirt #13. This summer I had also made one patch, that had a motivational message, for me, and also for my daughter. I’ll share here how you can DIY, but also how you can make an easier one on felt (scroll down).
1. Embroidering motivational patch – Perfect is boring
So one of my favorite patches I made this summer, was gonna say PERFECT IS BORING. As a note to self, here’s how you can make it.
Let’s try. What do you need?
- Fabric (I cut out a piece of thin embroidery fabric)
- A pen or pencil (My pen will fade after washing, I got it at Iris borduurt)
- Emboidery floss (I bought a stack of unused emboidery packages in the thriftstore. Needles all rusty, but floss still great!)
- Needle
- Sharp pair of scissors
- Iron on bond or fabric
The making of a patch
For the background and text I used paper cut outs 
To trace the design, I made a picture of it on my mobile, and traced through the thin fabric 
Choose colors, I went for blue, 
light yellow and 
dark yellow, more orange. 
It looks like a lemon, hihi. 
Now the design was ready, it still needed one thing… 
an edge. And here it is, the patch!
Opinion
Making this one was great to do, and I loved to work with a new design technique. But it took such a long time.
2. Motivational patch on felt – Let’s go!
As the PERFECT IS BORING, fully embroidered, patch took a lot of time to make, I wanted to try something different. So I already had used felt as a lining before, I thought it could also be a great background.
Let’s try. What do you need?
- Felt
- Fabric glue
- Emboidery floss (I bought a stack of unused emboidery packages in the thriftstore. Needles all rusty, but floss still great!)
- Sharp pair of scissors
The making of a patch
Testing the fabric glue, this one needed ironing. Later I burned the fabric while I was ironing. 
Cutting out the felt (no need to have a sewing machine) 
On this dark fabric you could not see the pen. So I used a white thread for the circle shape 
I freestyled with the words, which meant for ‘Let’s get lost’….’ 
there was not enough space. So it had to be ‘Let’s go!’ 
And a silver thread added for some shine 
Opinion
Let’s go! This last patch was all about being imperfect, hihi. Because it all went different from what I thought. In the end the patch was a bit hard to read. So I added silver and I love that touch. Now the best thing? You can cut out felt, without needing to tie off threads.