Custom school patches
worth keeping after the year ends.
Club and student-organization patches, achievement awards, class-year designs, and crest pieces for jackets. School colors fixed to Pantone codes and kept on file, so the club patch is the same four intakes from now.
- School colors Pantone-matched
- No setup fees
- Free US shipping
- 50-piece minimum
Four different buyers inside one school.
They have different budgets, different quantities, and different people signing off. Knowing which one you are changes what to order.
Clubs and organizations
Debate, robotics, band, honor societies, student government. Usually one design at the minimum, funded from a modest activity budget, reordered each intake.
Teams and athletic programs
Crests and award pieces across several squads. Often the largest single order a school places, because one crest covers multiple age groups.
Class years and school-wide
Graduating-class patches, anniversary marks, spirit-week pieces. Bigger quantities, and a fixed date they must land before.
Achievement and award patches
Merit awards, service hours, milestone marks. Small quantities per design, so schools normally batch several award types into one purchase.
The honest answer about varsity letters.
A traditional varsity letter, the big fuzzy block initial on the chest, is a chenille patch. Chenille has a raised plush pile that nothing else replicates, and it is a product we do not currently make. If that specific piece is what you need, we are not your shop for it, and we would rather tell you now than sell you something adjacent and hope you do not notice.
What we do make covers most of the rest of the jacket. Club and activity patches down the sleeve, achievement and award pieces, class-year marks, team crests, and service or officer patches all work in embroidery or woven, and they are what fills a jacket over four years. Plenty of schools source the chenille letter from a varsity specialist and everything around it from us.
For sleeve pieces, keep the patch at 3 inches or under so it does not wrap the seam, and use sew-on backing. A jacket is a decades-long keepsake and iron-on adhesive is not built for that timescale. The backing guide explains why.
Which one suits a school design.
Embroidered for jackets and crests
Raised thread with real presence on a jacket, and forgiving on the bold shapes and initials most school marks are built from. The default choice.
Woven for detailed seals
School seals carry small type: a motto, a founding year, a full institution name around a ring. Woven holds that lettering where embroidery would fill it in.
Not sure which your artwork suits? The embroidered vs woven guide compares them, and how to design a custom patch covers what survives at small sizes.
Planning an order on an activity budget.
Sizes run 2 × 2, 3 × 3, 4 × 4, 5 × 5, and 7 × 7 inches, and pricing follows the finished size selected at quoting. For a non-standard shape, send the finished width and height and we confirm the right size before production. Anything larger is quoted by hand.
| Application | Typical size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Jacket sleeve | 2 to 3 in | Keep under 3 inches so it does not wrap the seam. Sew-on backing. |
| Jacket chest | 3 to 4 in | Where a club or team crest sits. Embroidered carries best on wool and leather. |
| Club or org patch | 3 in | The standard all-purpose size, works on bags and hoodies as well as jackets. |
| Award or merit | 2 in | Small runs. Batch several award types into one purchase to keep admin down. |
| Class year | 2 to 3 in | Often paired with an existing crest rather than redesigning the whole mark. |
The 50-piece minimum applies per design, not per order. Several clubs can buy together in one purchase, and each design keeps its own locked record.
School colors that survive staff turnover.
Schools have the highest turnover of any buyer we deal with. The teacher who ran the club has moved on, the student who made the artwork graduated three years ago, and the file is on a laptop nobody has. That is the normal situation, not an unusual one.
It is why the design record matters more here than almost anywhere. When the first patch is approved we write the Pantone codes, the exact dimensions, and the stitch file into a permanent record. A reorder four years later runs from that record, carries no setup charge, and needs no artwork from your side. If your school colors are already defined as Pantone values, send them and we match directly. Otherwise the codes on your proof become the standard. The thread color chart shows the palette we stock.
Built for people doing this alongside a day job.
- 01
Price it
Set size and quantity in the calculator for an instant number you can take to whoever holds the budget.
- 02
Proof
A free mockup within 24 hours. Share it with the committee, come back with changes, revise as often as you need at no cost.
- 03
Approve
Nothing is produced until someone clicks approve. That click locks the design for future intakes.
- 04
Delivery
7 to 10 day delivery with tracking, free within the US. Tell us your date and we confirm it before you pay.
What a club patch costs.
Per-patch price for a 3 inch embroidered patch with sew-on backing, the standard club build. Straight from the same engine as the calculator.
| Quantity | 50 | 100 | 500 | 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 3 in, sew-on | $4.20 | $3.90 | $2.90 | $2.30 |
Digitizing, included
Included in the patch price, so the first order carries no setup charge and every future intake reorders the same patch.
No setup fees, free US shipping
No art charges, no plate fees, and unlimited proof revisions before approval. The quoted number is the number.
One purchase, several designs
Each design needs its own 50 pieces, but multiple club designs can go in one purchase so there is one invoice and one delivery.
Full breakdown on the pricing page, or what custom patches cost if you need to justify the number to a budget holder.
What schools ask first.
Letterman letters are usually chenille. Do you make those?+
No, and it is worth being straight about it. Chenille, the fuzzy raised pile on a classic varsity letter, is not a product PANTHER PATCH currently makes. What we do make is embroidered and woven patches, which cover club patches, achievement awards, class-year pieces, and crest-style designs for the same jacket. If your heart is set on a traditional chenille block letter, we are not the right shop for that specific piece, and we would rather say so than take the order.
Can several clubs at one school combine into a single order?+
Not into one design, but into one purchase, yes. The 50-piece minimum applies per design, because each design carries its own stitch file and setup. So four clubs each wanting 50 of their own patch is four designs and four minimums. What schools do successfully is order all four at once so the shipment and the admin are handled together, and each design still gets its own locked record.
Can each patch carry a different student name or year?+
Technically yes, but the economics are usually wrong. Every variation is a separate design with its own stitch file, so 40 individually named patches is 40 separate setups rather than one, and each still has to clear the 50-piece minimum on its own. Groups that want personalization usually run one shared club design and add a small separate year patch, which keeps one setup for the crest and one for the year.
What size works on a letterman jacket sleeve versus the back?+
Sleeve pieces generally sit at 3 inches or under so they do not wrap the seam, and a chest piece is usually 3 to 4 inches. A full back design usually runs past the 7-inch top of our instant calculator, so that gets quoted by hand with a reply within 4 hours. Pricing follows the finished size you select when you quote, so for an oval or shield just send the finished width and height and we confirm the right size before production.
Nobody here has the original artwork any more. Can you still reorder?+
Yes, if the original order came through us. Schools turn over staff and students faster than almost any buyer, so the artwork going missing is normal rather than unusual. When the first patch was approved we wrote the Pantone codes, dimensions, and stitch file into a permanent record. A reorder runs from that record, not from a file you have to find, and it carries no setup charge.
Get your school patches priced.
See a real per-patch price you can take straight to the budget holder. Free mockup in 24 hours, no setup fees.