Cut Out Patches (sweatshirt Decoration)

These cut out patches are a fun way to decorate a boring piece of clothing or a completely new piece. You need a sewing machine but we'll be only topstitching, nothing too difficult.

Decorating a new piece offers a bit more possibilities as you can't really do these patches on sleeves if the garment is already finished, or you have to do all the topstitching by hand. However, it's a great way to make an old piece of clothing more interesting and I do recommend, trying it.

First of all, you need a piece of clothing or the pieces of the garment you're sewing. As you can see here, I wrote this Instructable while decorating pieces of a sweatshirt which I then sew together.

You'll also need:

1. another fabric of similar elasticity (let's call it Fabric B) - as for the design, I recommend contrast. like contrasting colors or, if the piece of clothing is unicolor, use a fabric of multicolor design and vice versa
2. sewing machine
3. thread - matching or contrasting
4. pins
5. scissors for fabric
6. small very precise scissors
7. pencil
8. paper

On a piece of paper, draw the shapes of your future patches. The actual patches will be a little smaller than the stencils so thing about that. They can be anything that has at least a little bit of area to cut out - flowers, leaves, hearts...

Next, cut the stencils out.

Place them on the piece of clothing and trace with a pencil wherever you want the patches to be. If you're making a new garment, make sure you don't place the patches in your seam allowance or hem.

The advantage of the new garment is that you can decorate sleeves or any narrow tunnel-shaped parts easily. With an existing garment, you'll have to do all the stitching on these parts by hand but it can be done.

For each shape or group of shapes, cut out a piece of fabric that is at least 1/2 inch larger on each side than the shape/group of shapes.

Place this piece of fabric B on the wrong side of the piece of clothing, fabric B should be right side up and directly centered under the shape.

Pin the garment and fabric B from the right side of the garment together. You're pinning around the shape you drew.

If you're pinning a group of shapes, I recommend putting a needle also between the shapes.

If any piece of fabric B goes too far and "invades" another shape, just cut it off. Make sure you don't cut closer to the shapes than 1/2 inch from the edges of the shapes you traced on the right side.

Place the whole thing right side up, you should see the shapes you traced and the pinheads. Topstitch all the shapes with a straight and short stitch.

Do this for every single shape.

Turn it wrong side up, you'll see the wrong side of the pieces of fabric B.

Some of the edges of the pieces of fabric B are too large, they would curl and it might be annoying when you wear the garment. Trim them around the shapes and group of shapes leaving some edges (meaning, don't cut right next to the topstitching.

Turn the piece right side up. Using small pointy scissors, cut out the inside area of each shape but only from the fabric of the garment! You need to be extra careful not to cut the fabric B. It's more challenging when you start, what I like to do is I pinch the top fabric with two fingers and cut a small hole which I then use to insert the scissors. Even after that, continue cutting slowly and carefully.

When cutting, stay a few millimeters from the topstitching.

When you cut out the whole shape, take the cutout off and you'll be able to see the shape filled with fabric B.

Correct any too irregular edges.

And now you can sew the pieces of the garment together if you're making a new one.

I also added a 2-tier neckband made from fabric B and lined the inside of the edges of the sleeves with the same fabric but that's for another tutorial.