No longer the preserve of the 1970s Geography teacher, elbow patches are making a comeback.
This tutorial shows you how to make elbow patches for your own piece of knitwear, as inspired by cardigan at ASOS, Zara and H & M. I've gone for a more quirky approach, by making them heart-shaped and leopard print.
Although these elbow patches are designed to be decorative they can also be practical. I used them on a cardigan which had developed a hole in the elbow, so this was a great way to cover the hole and give the cardigan a new lease of life. It would also be a nice way to revamp charity shop knitwear.
When choosing what material to use for the elbow patches, keep in mind the weight (thickness) of your fabric. Cord and similar heavy fabrics have a lovely traditional look and will be hard wearing although they might be a little heavy on fine knitwear. Printed cottons, like the leopard print I chose, provide a large range of designs and colours to choose from.
What you will need:
Your garment – jumper or cardigan
Needle and thread
Scrap fabric
Paper and pencil
Paper scissors
Fabric scissors
Pins
1. To begin you need to draw a pattern on paper for the shape of your elbow patch. To draw a heart, fold the paper in half and draw half of the heart. This way you will be sure that the shape will be symmetrical. Ideally you will have scissors specifically for cutting fabric – do not use these for paper as this will blunt them quickly.
2. Check the size of your template on your sleeve
3. Pin the template onto doubled fabric/two pieces of fabric to cut it out – this way you only need to cut once. Cut around the template, leaving about a 1 cm border.
4. Separate the pieces of fabric. On each one, iron the fabric border back over the template so it is folded over the paper. You will need to snip some small triangles out of the fabric along the curves and make a few cuts into the fabric to ensure that it is fully folded back around the template.
5. Pin each piece of fabric on the sleeve. You might need to get help with this to get the position right. Handsew the patch on.
6. The finished item!
Check out more of Kerry's tutorials:
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article