So here’s how I made Super Mario Bros patches, and the technique works for any custom clothing patches…
I used Google image search to find images from the game: a mushroom, a star, a cloud, and the ghost. I picked simple designs that only had a few colors.
After I picked a few possible patch images, I used Word to lay out the images in various sizes and printed them out.
I decided to start with the star which is only one color.
I cut up the printout, laid the different sizes on the hole I was patching, and picked which size I thought worked best.
I bought fabrics specifically for my patches. I got an 1/8 yard of twill in each of the colors I needed from Joann. Each piece cost a little over a dollar, so I didn’t spend a lot which is nice. It would have been nicer if I had used scraps from my stash, but I don’t stock solid colors, so I didn’t have anything on hand that I could use.
I took a piece of Heat ‘n Bond and fused it to the wrong side of my yellow fabric.
I flipped the fabric over and taped the star image to the fabric, making sure that it was on top of my Heat ‘n Bond piece.
I cut out the star shape.
Using a fabric marker, I drew the eyes on. I practiced drawing the eyes on some scrap fabric first because I’m not that great of an artist and I have a tendency to mess up my first few attempts at drawing anything.
I also took some fray check and dabbed a spot on each of the star points to keep them from fraying too much. I find the fray check helps hold small bits together when I start sewing the patches down.
I peeled off the paper backing…
And fused the patch over the hole in the pants.
Then I took needle and thread, and whipstitched around the edges of the star.
The mushroom patch was a little more complicated because of the different colors. I decided to use the mushroom stem color as my base and work up from there.
I repeated the same steps as with the star: fused Heat ‘n Bond to the wrong side of my tan fabric and cut out the entire mushroom shape.
Then I fused Heat ‘n Bond to the red fabric and taped down the mushroom image again…
And cut out the mushroom cap.
Repeating the steps above, I cut the mushroom spots from my white fabric. I fray checked the smaller white spots because they were so small that I was worried about them falling apart.
At this point, I drew on the eyes. I could have done the eyes at any point but I was worried I might mess up on the eyes, so I wanted to draw them on before I started fusing all the pieces together.
I fused the white pieces to the mushroom cap…
Then I fused the entire mushroom cap to the base. The mushroom cap needed to be stitched on like the white dots, but I opted to wait until the patch was on the pants.
I ironed the patch over the knee and sewed down the patch using red thread around the mushroom cap and tan thread around the base.
I think it took me about an hour to do both patches, and they turned out really cute! The Larva is very fond of these pants now, and I’ve put them through the wash at least 3 times since I patched them, and the patches are holding up great!
I think next patches will be Zelda themed. =)