Back to School Free Patch Embroidery Design Collection

Back-to-school season sneaks up on all of us, but there’s one thing that’s no surprise – every kid wants something unique to personalize their gear! From jean jackets to backpacks, it’s fun (and functional) to make sure your kids’ belongings stand out from the sea of similar items swimming around the school. We encourage you to help your favorite kiddos to express their creativity with this super-fun collection of free-standing patch embroidery designs created by our own Lisa Shaw.

Each of these patches has the lovely faux overlock edge available both in stock shapes and contour wraps from our PatchArtist software or as a custom stitch type for any border shape in Stitch Artist Level 3. This edge gives any patch the look and feel of a real, vintage emblem! Not to show her age, but Lisa admits that she had a few of these classic overlock-edged badges back in the day and hand stitched them on the back pockets of her bell bottoms and her bicycle banana seat. Like Lisa, your kids may even want to collect them and trade with their friends. Those mass-produced patches were cool, but with our modern embroidery machines and tools from Embrilliance, we can easily make and modify pretty patches like these ourselves!

If you own either PatchArtist or StitchArtist Level 3, you can quickly change most of these patch designs from free-standing fill to one of the other applique fabric options. Simply select one of the other patch-making methods from the ‘Edge’ tab in the Properties pane to switch. The Happy Daisy, which was purpose-made only for free-standing stitching, can’t be changed to a fabric-based option.

If you are interested to see how the Heart Sketch Flag patch was created, you will want to check out Lisa’s Afterhours session on Facebook. She walks you through the digitizing process with tips on how to create the layers using features of StitchArtist L3.

This is a similar in technique to an earlier project we’ve shared, the in the hoop coaster. She also refers to her post explaining the stitching and finishing methods she uses for all of her patches. If you want to give your emblems them a professional feel and make them iron-on attachable, you can learn how here.

These designs are made available in our native .BE format, enabling you to save a stitch file for any embroidery machine. If you aren’t already an Embrilliance owner, we provide a free method to use our software called Express Mode that will not only allow you to use any of the wonderful free designs found in our project blog, but also enables you to install and create basic text treatments with fonts distributed in our popular .BX format produced by many embroidery design creators.

To learn more about Embrilliance Express and for the instructions and links you need to download, install, and use our software with our free project files, please click here.