Making an Iron on DTG Patch

Making an Iron on DTG Patch

Equipment required
Direct to Garment Printing
Sewing Machine
Company
TPZ
Timeframe
Spring 2026
In this tutorial you will learn how to make and sew a custom iron on patch. Once Heat n Bond iron on backing is applied, either cut or DTG your design onto your fabric. Then, we will learn the proper technique for stitch overlaying the patch onto fabric.
 
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You must already know basic sewing
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Material List

Supplies
Quantity
Fabric (preferably on the thicker side)
any
Heat n Bond Iron on Backing
any

Safety First

Please review sewing safety!

Preparing your fabric

This section will walk you through preparing your fabric for DTG or cutting. I’m doing 2 fabrics here, one for both methods, but you only need 1.

Picking your fabric

  1. Gather your materials!
    1. A heavyweight fabric
    2. Pretreat
    3. An iron
… and iron your fabric flat
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Your fabric should not be see through!
 

Pretreating your fabric

In order to get the most crisp image on your fabric, pretreating is the way to go.
  1. Go to the DTG island and find the pretreat
      2. it should be in this bottle labeled
       
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  1. Spray/soak the fabric where you want your design to go
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  1. Iron dry

DTG Patch

If you want to make your own (super) custom patches, look no further than the DTG. On the DTG you can print any photo you want onto fabric. For this tutorial, we will be using the DTG to create a design, then iron on backed fabric that we can then cut out and put on clothes.
  1. Pick any image and make sure its a PNG
      • You want only the image you want to print, not the background.
      I’m picking this awesome very hungry caterpillar design.
       
 
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See how this guy has no white background?
  1. Next, take your image and put it on a USB drive.
  1. Travel to the DTG and turn on the heat press and computer (these will require fabman authentication.)
  1. Place your fabric on the DTG.
 
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PSA if your design uses white ink, you must pretreat the fabric
 
  1. Open Aculine on the computer and take a snapshot.
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  1. Next, plug your USB into the computer, select file, and then select ‘select image.’
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  1. Find your PNG and size it to how big you want your final design. Then, position to the design on your fabric —>
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  1. Open the settings and select color + white ink if you have a light colored image, then press OK.
  1. Select the printer icon to send the design to the printer.
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  1. On the machine, press the flashing green button to start the print
    1. You should be able to see your design previewed on the screen.
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  1. After your design is printed, quickly put the fabric in the heat press and press down. After this step, the ink is set, and you can safely touch the printed design.

Adding the Iron on backing

Next, we have to add the Heat N Bond backing
  1. Cut your fabric down to nearly the size of your patch and cut out an equal size piece of Heat N Bond
 
 
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  1. Iron the Heat n Bond shiny side down on the backside of your fabric
  1. Cut your patch to the desired size
 
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  1. Iron the patch onto your fabric with a piece of parchment covering your design — otherwise it will burn off!
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Finishing the Stitching

Our final step is sewing the patch fully down. This step is optional, but helps secure fraying and makes sure the patch will not fall off.
  1. First, turn on your machine and thread it. For a tutorial on how to do this, click here
 
 
  1. Next, find your zig zag stitch and adjust the settings to:
    1. width: 3.0
    2. length: 0.9
 
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  1. Stitch along the edge of your patch
 
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And yay! You did it!
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