Varsity Patch(es)

What you’ll need:

  • Felt (I went the ROYGBIV route and chose a different color for each letter.)
  • A contrasting-colored fabric or felt
  • Tacky Glue
  • Sharp scissors
  • Printer paper
  • A pencil or a pen
  • Fabric pins (optional, but helpful!)

How to do it:

Step One
Choose what you want to spell out, and draw (or type!) it onto a piece of printer paper. Be sure to adjust the size so that it’ll fit on your jacket.

Step Two

varsity letter-1

Once you have the letters drawn or typed onto your piece of paper, cut ’em out! They’ll act as a stencil for your varsity letters. If you’ve typed the letters out, you can resize and reprint if you need them to be bigger or smaller.

Step Three

varsity letter-2

Place a paper letter stencil onto your felt, pin it into place with a fabric pin, and cut it out with a pair of sharp scissors. This will be the back layer of your letter!

Step Four

varsity letter-3

Repeat for each letter, and hang on to the paper stencils! You’ll need them later.

Step Five

Cut around the edge of each paper letter stencil, trimming two to three millimeters off. This will give you a new, slightly smaller stencil to work with.

Step Six

varsity letter-4

Take the new stencil, and repeat Step Three with your contrasting color fabric or felt.

Step Seven

Align the smaller letters on top of the bigger backing layers, and trim as needed. A bit of the backing layer should peek out, giving a little pop of color, so don’t trim too much!

Step Eight

varsity letter-5

Cover the back of the smaller letter with a layer of Tacky Glue, and press it evenly onto the bigger letter. Repeat for each letter, and let ’em dry!

Step Nine

Attach the letters to your jacket. There are a few ways you can tackle this: using Tacky Glue or another type of fabric glue (note that this is not the best method to use if you intend to wear and wash your jacket frequently), using a fusible transfer web (this is just fancy talk for iron-on material! It’s good stuff, but may need to be reinforced with a hot iron every so often), or by sewing them on either by hand, or with a sewing machine. I opted to sew mine so that I won’t have to worry about my letters falling off. (This is a great tutorial for hand sewing patches onto clothes, if you need it! Start at the two minute mark.)