TUTORIAL: Making patches

Today I am showing off my two methods of making patches! You can sew these onto any item of clothing or bag or whatever to make it look a bit more interesting and they're easy enough to make with things you probably already have. You can also upscale these to decorate straight onto larger items.

• Base fabric, this can be anything that your chosen paints works on. Reuse some scraps!
• Paints or markers, again use anything that works on your chosen fabric. Ideally, test that your paints are waterproof by putting a little on your fabric, letting it dry and then trying to smudge it under running water. If you're using paint, get a paintbrush or sponge too.
• Scissors that can cut your fabric.
• A screen like the one you are viewing this on.
• Paper (stencil method only), stronger paper can be a little easier to work with.
• Small and sharp blade (stencil method only) such as a craft knife or a pencil sharpener blade.
• Your design! You can do anything, doesn't have to be a punk or metal band logo like you see most often. If you want to use a punk or metal band logo, though, Anarchostencilism on Reddit and DeviantArt has all that and more, so I recommend searching on there first.

This is sort of the quick way especially if you're using a lot of different colours, only really works on very light coloured fabrics, though. First, prepare your design, I'm using Milhouse from the Simpsons: Next, get it up on your screen, the same size you want the patch to be. I wanted it a little bigger than my phone screen so I zoomed in and took two screenshots, which is quite hard to show on here but essentially I split poor Milhouse in half to use both screenshots separately.
Place your fabric on top of your screen and start lightly tracing over it. You might want to turn your brightness up to see it clearer. I had this after this first step: Now you can put your fabric in a more comfortable position to paint on and add your colours (I use paint markers, but again you can use whatever you prefer - experiment!), referencing the original design: Go over the lines to make it pop a bit - keep in mind your patch will be seen more often for a few seconds at a time by random passers by than carefully scrutinised so you don't have to stress about making it perfect, but it's going to be more effective if it stands out at a glance. Cut it out and it's finished! This method is more complicated but if you've got more time on your hands it's perfect for single colours on darker fabrics, like the iconic white-on-black I'll demonstrate. Make sure your design is possible in stencil form with no floating 'islands', draw some bridges between floating points and the rest of the design if necessary. Political Asylum, a wonderful little hardcore band, were kind enough to do that for me: Just like with the first method, trace your design from your screen, but this time onto a scrap of paper. Use a fairly thin pen to keep all the little details. To strengthen your stencil, you might want to cover it in some sort of transparent tape before moving on to the next step! You could print your design straight onto paper to speed things up, but I couldn't be bothered to get my printer working: Cut out your design for the stencil. Try to be exact with this as what you cut is what you paint, but you're not going to be perfect at this immediately, so know you can tidy things up afterwards. I've bridged some gaps from the original design because this paper I stole from my maths class is incredibly flimsy and I don't want the thinner pieces to snap off: Paint time! Place your new stencil over your fabric and slam down as much paint (or marker, I guess) as you need in whatever colour you need, I used two coats here but you might want more or less: Now you get the incredibly satisfying job of peeling off your stencil. It's easier while the paint is still a little wet. If your paper is strong enough you might even be able to get it off in one piece to reuse it! I had loads of stencil residue left so I had to spend ages picking it off (see tape advice from step 2 if you don't want to deal with that): Finally, clean it up with more paint in your original colour and the colour of your fabric. Paint over any bridges you made, straighten any edges, keep looking over it until you can't find anything wrong with it, then trim it down and you're done!  Another little tip for tidying, if your paintbrush is a little fucked like mine is, I like to dip the point of a pencil in my paint for super fine lines - didn't use it here but the Shadow the Hedgehog patch I show off later uses that for the whole outline. I don't have many examples of the tracing method but here are some other stencil method patches I have made recently: Now you can sew these onto pretty much anything - Political Asylum are going on my third battle jacket, which is all black and white, and I'll try to find some room for Milhouse on my first one, which is more colourful. I'm not going to be the one to teach you how to sew so look up a tutorial if you need to, I recommend using a whip stitch around these to keep them from fraying themselves to death, or fold the edges over as you sew.
I hope this tutorial was useful and inspired you to customise your things a bit! Show off your patches in the comments of this if you want :D