Alright folks, lemme tell you about this little adventure I had with star patches. I’ve been dabbling in embroidery for a while now, mostly just fixing up old clothes and stuff, but I wanted to try something a bit more… decorative. So, star patches it was!
First off, I grabbed some supplies. I went to the local craft store and picked up some felt in a few different colors – classic black, a shiny gold, and a deep blue. Figured those would make for some cool-looking stars. I also needed some embroidery floss, a needle (obviously!), scissors, and some iron-on adhesive backing.
Next up was the design phase. I’m no artist, so I kept it simple. I just drew a basic five-pointed star on a piece of paper. I made a couple of different sizes, small ones for accents and some bigger ones to be the main focus. I then cut those star shapes out to use as templates.
Then came the cutting and tracing. I pinned my paper templates onto the felt and carefully cut around them. Pro tip: use really sharp scissors! Dull scissors will make the felt fray like crazy. After cutting them I ended up with like fifteen or so felt stars.
The embroidery was the most time-consuming part. I decided to outline each star with embroidery floss. For the gold stars on black felt, I used a bright red floss to make them really pop. For the blue stars, I used a shimmering silver floss. I mostly used a simple back stitch, nice and sturdy. I learned the hard way that you should keep your stitches consistent and not pull too tight, otherwise the felt will pucker.
After the embroidery, I trimmed up any loose threads and made sure everything looked neat and tidy. Time to attach the adhesive backing. I cut the iron-on adhesive to the shape of the stars, peeled off the paper backing, and ironed it onto the back of each patch. Make sure you use a pressing cloth to protect the felt from the direct heat of the iron!
Finally, the application! I decided to jazz up an old denim jacket. I arranged the star patches on the back of the jacket in a sort of random pattern, making sure to space them out nicely. Then, I ironed them on, one by one, holding the iron in place for a good 30 seconds to make sure they were really stuck on there. To be extra sure, I also stitched around the edges of each star patch with my sewing machine. A little overkill, maybe, but I wanted those stars to stay put!
And that was it! My old denim jacket now looks way cooler with its star patch makeover. It was a fun little project, and I learned a lot about working with felt and embroidery. Definitely going to be making more patches in the future! Maybe next time I’ll try some more complicated designs.
