Cover Up an Unwanted Logo with a Stitched Patch

Don’t let an unwanted logo turn you away from an otherwise nice piece of clothing. Hiding that logo is an easy fix!

‘Tis the season for corporations to give out holiday gifts of name-brand clothing items ruined with their boring company logos. I don’t know who invented the idea of taking a nice windbreaker or fleece sweater and screwing it up by stitching on the name of the place you’re indentured to for 40 hours a week, but I hate it.

Even if you’re otherwise free from this annoying phenomenon, just try thrift shopping for outer layers and you’ll come across the donated corporate merch of others who simply gave up and gave their swag away rather than spend their nice camping weekend as a walking advertisement for the place they go everyday when they’d rather be camping.

Fortunately, covering up that unwanted logo–or rip, or stain, or even just a tiny weird graphic you don’t love–is a super simple fix. It’s an easy beginner’s sewing project as long as you’re a beginner who pays attention to detail and is fairly meticulous. These were not skills that I, personally, held when I was a beginning sewist, so just have more patience than me and you’ll do fine!

Materials

Here’s what you’ll need for this project:

• patch. You can find all kinds of patches for whatever you fancy, or you can DIY a patch from matching fabric, if you’d rather just cover the logo and not add additional flair. Make sure that the patch is larger than what you’re trying to cover up with it!
• matching thread. This is one of those meticulous details you ought to pay attention to. Matching the outer edge of the patch, combined with careful sewing, will make your stitches nearly invisible. But also don’t be afraid to use a fun thread color if you’d rather have your patch stand out!
• glue stick. I love glue sticks for basting patches in place. For a more permanent fix, though, use something like Aleene’s fabric glue. I never use fabric glue as a replacement for sewing, but I do like it sometimes for reinforcement and support.
• sewing supplies. For the windbreaker and thick store-bought patch that I’m working with in this tutorial, I needed a Microtex needle. For thinner materials, you could probably get away with a new universal needle.

Step 1: Prep the Garment and Place the Patch

It’s not specifically necessary for this project, but I usually like to wash a clothing item before I work on it, whether it came from the closet or the thrift store. I always just feel like if I’m putting my hands all over something and putting it all over my sewing machine, I want to know that it’s squeaky clean! Does anyone else do this, or is it another fun anxiety symptom I can add to my list? Ahem.

When your current anxiety level will let you procede, now is the time to place and baste your patch. I actually went with the Aleene’s fabric glue instead of a glue stick here, because my partner insisted on this Captain America patch that’s only just larger than the company logo he wanted it to cover. I’m reasonably confident that nothing will shift when I use the glue stick, but we’re talking millimeters of difference here, on a fabric that looked like it wouldn’t take well to seam-ripping and re-sewing, so I chose the confidence boost of gluing that patch down EXACTLY where I wanted it.

Step 2: Sew the Patch Down

My sewing machine is SOOOO finicky, so before I sew anything new, I have to test my proposed thread and stitch length with my fabric. In a case like this, in which I don’t have any extra of the exact fabric to practice, on, I just use the closest approximation I can scrounge up.

The thickness of a patch can really challenge your sewing machine, so skip testing at your own risk!

To sew this particular patch down, I used a zigzag stitch with a length of 3 and a width of 2. I am stoked that I managed to keep the stitching entirely to that black border on the patch, which, combined with the black fabric of the windbreaker, means that it’s delightfully invisible!

We’re mixing IPs a bit, but here’s a shot of my partner’s slightly refashioned windbreaker out in the wilds of Hobbiton:

And yes, just between us, that bright red and blue patch is gaudier than I personally would have preferred for appearing in all of my New Zealand vacation photos, but I can’t fault the man too much for his choice, because Captain America IS awesome.

It’s just occurred to me that I should probably find myself a Winter Soldier patch to sew onto MY black windbreaker, and then we can be a matched set!