How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Ready to give that denim jacket a fun reboot for the season?

A quick and easy way to breathe new life into that old denim jacket is by up-cycling a tee into an uber chic patch.

Seriously folks this isn’t one of those cool but really hard DIY’s you find on PINTEREST, with this one you can REALLY DO IT YOURSELF.

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

All you need is:

-an old t-shirt

-Iron on (non)woven interfacing (stiff, but not to hard)

-sewing kit or sewing machine 

-scissors

-pins

-pencil or chalk for marking

-iron with steam setting and ironing board

-dish towel or pillowcase

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Select your t-shirt graphic and cut roughly around it, leaving plenty of room around the graphic- I usually start by cutting just in front of all the seams.

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Next grab your interfacing and cut it to the shape you want your patch- this is how you will add structure to the fabric so it’s sturdy enough to work as a large patch. I made a square back patch so I cut it to lay just inside the seams of the jacket.

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Place your cut out tee on top of the interfacing you just sized making sure that the fabric is a few inches larger than the interfacing.

Now here’s the key part.  

Read the directions thoroughly on your interfacing- it’s that weird wax paper type of strip that is wrapped around it. That will tell you which side of it to place against the fabric and how long to use heat on it.

You are now going to step away to your ironing board and attach the two pieces together.

Place your design piece graphic-side down on the ironing board then place the shiny side (or whichever side your instructions tell you) of the interfacing to the back of your graphic piece.

Dampen a thin dish towel or pillowcase and place it over both layers of fabric. You might want to put another piece of damp scrap cloth under the T-shirt first—the screen printing ink started sticking to the fabric of the ironing board cover a bit when I did this because of the high heat and pressure.

Hold iron still and press firmly for 8-10 seconds (or follow the directions if yours say something different). Move to the next area and go all around the piece until all areas have been ironed making sure to steam and then lift- DO NOT MOVE THE IRON AROUND LIKE YOU WOULD IF YOU WERE IRONING A SHIRT.

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Once you finished heat pressing the entire surface the two pieces will be attached and you can remove the dish cloth/pillowcase and turn the piece over. Trim it up a bit by cutting more precisely around the design, leaving at least 1/4″ of space around the edges.

Wrap that 1/4″ of excess fabric around the back of your patch and pin it in place.

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

Flip it over and pin the patch in place on your denim jacket.

Head to your sewing machine and attach the patch to the jacket with a straight stitch around the edges.  You can also do this by hand with a sewing kit- it will just take longer.

There you have it- you just up-cycled two old pieces of clothing into something brand new and totally unique! Rock on!

How to Turn a T-Shirt Graphic into a Patch

T-shirt Patch DIY

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