DIY - Hand Sewn Badge

If there's one thing I love, it's to personalize things. However, I sometimes dread actually punching my needle through the clothes and bags I like. What if it wouldn't turn out the way I wanted it to? But with this project, I found a way to personalize to my heart's content, without the fear of failure holding me back. So get out your old sewing kit, and let's get started making one of these hand sewn badges!

Here's what you'll need:

A pair of scissors

A button (the size you want your badge to be)

A needle

A safety pin

Embroidery thread (I use DMC mouline)

Some felt

Fabric or an embroidered motif that you want to make your badge out of*

*Make sure you have a lot of seam allowance around it, as seen on the picture. My finished product measured 3.5 cm across, and the square piece of fabric I made it from was 9 x 9 cm.

The first thing you'll want to do is wrap the fabric around the button, as seen on the picture. Make sure you align it so that the motif (if you have one) is centered.

Next you should sew the excess fabric in the back together. This needn't be very pretty, you just need to make sure the fabric in front of the button stays the way you want it to.

Lastly cut of the excess fabric as seen in the picture. Just make sure you don't undo any of you previous stitches.

Cut out a piece of felt that is roughly the size of your button plus the height of your button. This is so that the felt will be able to wrap around the back and sides of your button.

Once you've done this, secure your thread with a knot, and start sewing around the sides. Do this by pulling your needle and thread through the felt and up the side of the button, punching through the edge of the fabric. Repeat this, but next time bring the needle up right next to where you previously did. Work your way around the whole button. When you're finished, secure by doing one more stitch, but this time pull your needle through the loop as seen in the pictures. Then pull your needle right through the felt back, pull the thread and cut of the excess as closely as you can. This will make the thread slip "into" the back, out of sight.

Good job so far, we're nearly finished!

All that's left is to sew the safety pin in place. First, decide where you want it to be. I recommend putting it on the upper half of the button, so that it will fall nicely when we pin it somewhere. Remember to make sure you have the right side of the pin facing out! We want to be able to open the safety pin (:

When you've decided where to place your pin, start sewing it in place. We want to "wrap" the thread around the pin. Start by bringing the needle in just under your pin, and out just over it. Then bring your needle through your pin (as seen in the pictures) and repeat. When you reach the end, secure with a knot through the "head" of the safety pin (like we did in the previous step). Pull the thread through the felt, cut closely (again, like in the previous step) and that's it!*

*(Except you might've noticed that in the pictures I went back through the felt and did another stitch in the beginning, and secured the thread where I started. I did this because I thought my first stitch was to far away from the end of the safety pin, and I wanted to make sure the pin was extra secure. But this isn't anything you need to worry about, just know that it's an option if you're not happy with the first stich/es you made.)

Well done, you just learnt how to make a hand sewn badge! Thank you very much for joining me in making this project, I hope you had as fun as I did!

P.S - If you're interested in the embroidered motifs I used, then check out the book "Mega Mini Cross Stitch" by Makoto Oozu. That's where I got the frog and the mushroom from. The heart design is as seen in the picture above.