Leather Patch Jacket

Though I have only been on a motorcycle once in my life and will likely never have the guts to be a biker chick, I’ve always loved the look of leather. Leather jackets, leather gear, all looking tough and bold. Biker-inspired gear is also often a place you find a lot of cool embellishment. So what if I don’t have my own biker gang? I can invent my own look, even with a limited hoop size, and with a few tricks for getting around stitching on leather, it’s easy to upcycle a plain thrifted leather jacket into the latest biker chic look.

To get around this, we’ll go back to the original no-fuss solution. Pleather! Now, you’ll either want pleather that matches your jacket (which is easy, if you’re working with black leather) or perhaps contrasting, if you can’t find an exact match. Here’s the full roundup of supplies:

Supplies & Materials:

Project Materials
- Thrifted leather jacket

- Pleather (matching or contrasting, your choice!)

- Awesome Lucky 7 embroidery designs (I’d get the pack!)

More materials & supplies:

- Medium weight cutaway stabilizer
- Scissors
- Printed templates for placement
- Pins and masking tape

The designs used in this tutorial include:

- UT6285, Lucky 7 Cross
- UT6315, Lucky 7 Roses

Gather Materials:

OK, so the first thing we need to figure out is what to put on your jacket. You might be thinking “But wait, I don’t have a hoop big enough to do a jacket back!”

Ah, but that’s where the fun of the Lucky 7 collection comes in. You see, it’s a combination of bolder-stitching feature designs and lighter-stitching background designs that you can combine to create a big, bold and beautiful complete design that is totally up to you!

Dark brown leather jacket shown from the back, with a large outlined question mark stitched in white thread on the center back panel. White background.

What do I mean? Well, take for example these two designs. We have one lighter-stitching background design, and one big and bold cross design. Combine them together with a little creative mirroring, and what do you get?

Black and white outlined embroidery design of two roses with leaves on the left, and a stylized wood-textured ornamental cross with a plus sign between them.

Start Embroidering:

A bigger, badder design than any on its own! The beauty of these designs is the lighter-stitching features can easily be stitched over and layered with the heavier designs, so you can combine them in lots of ways in the background.

How many?

Light gray leather jacket with embroidery on the back featuring a large gold cross centered between two clusters of dark outlined roses and leaves.

Well, a lot! All kinds of combinations can come to mind if you get creative with how you mirror and repeat things.

Illustration of a roaring leopard head with flames, a flying eagle, crossed pistols over roses, a skull wearing a top hat with spade, and a winged lion with a crown, all in brown and gray tones.

All these designs would make fantastic new showcase pieces for the back of your rad new jacket, or anywhere really! If you really want to explore, try printing templates of each design, and rotating, combining, and seeing what you can come up with!

Three gray leather jackets shown from the back, each featuring a distinct embroidered patch: a snarling leopard head on tribal flames, a soaring eagle with wings spread on tribal flames, and a crowned griffin holding a sword on swirling clouds.

Here’s how I mapped this design out. First, I had two printed templates of the rose, and one of the cross.

Hmm, but I want a mirrored version of the roses so I can work out both sides of the design. Can’t figure out how to do that in your software? Never fear...

Three leather patches on a white surface: one black ornamental cross with a fleur-de-lis design and two white patches with intricate black rose outlines.

Just hold your template up to a window and trace the basic elements with a pen. You’ll now have a reverse image of your design.

(Make sure you'll be able to mirror the design on your embroidery machine, too!)

Hand holding a black marker drawing two large rose outlines with leaves on translucent paper against white background.

Flip ‘em around and play with spacing on your jacket until you find a layout you like and suits the space on your jacket, or wherever you’re stitching it.

The nice part about this custom layout option is you can expand or contract the design space to suit exactly the garment you’re stitching for. Wider shoulders? Just space the roses out a bit more.

Three paper patterns on brown leather: a black ornate cross design in the center, and two floral rose outlines on each side.

Get Inspired:

Once you’re ready, you can either tape your templates in place, or mark the crosshairs of the center of your design with some tape to help you get exact hooping.

Remember, if you have a real leather jacket, you should be marking this on your pleather piece. If you don’t have a real leather jacket...

Hands holding a pen and paper stencil over a brown leather surface with a taped outline. The stencil shows a partial leaf and swirl design.

Well, go ahead and stitch right on that baby! You may wish to open up the lining of your jacket to hide the stabilizer, but other than that the process is just like stitching anything else.

But I get ahead of myself...

Person wearing a gray leather jacket with a red skull patch on the back, featuring a top hat with a playing card, over dark embroidered patterns.

OK, so let’s do these one at a time. Hoop up your pleather with some medium weight cutaway stabilizer, to properly support the embroidery to come.

First stitch your right roses...

Close-up of two black-stitched rose flowers with leaves on a brown leather surface, with a white number "1" in the bottom left corner.

Then your left roses. Be sure to mirror the design in your software, so you get an exact alignment.

Close-up of two identical black embroidered rose designs side by side on a light brown leather surface, with the white number "2" on the left.

Finally, you can stitch your big showcase piece right on top. Yes, some of your roses will get covered up. That’s OK! They’re supposed to be background pieces.

Look at that! A big beautiful jacketback just using 5"x7" designs. Neato.

Brown leather surface with an embroidered beige and brown cross in the center, flanked by sketched outlines of roses on both sides. Number 3 in white font in the top left corner.

Now it’s time to “patch” our pleather onto the jacket. Cut around the shape of your design, but leave yourself plenty of excess around it, like at least an inch or more.

Hand using Fiskars scissors to cut a piece of brown leather with a floral pattern drawn on it, on a brown leather surface.

Now center your new pleather design on the back of your jacket. Once it’s exactly where you want it, fix it in place. If you're using pins, use as few as possible and place them strategically, since the perforations will remain when the pin is gone.

Even better, avoid puncturing the fabrics altogether by using masking tape to hold the patch in place (just remove it right before you sew over the taped area). Test first to make sure the tape won't damage the leather surface.

Close-up of hands working on a black leather jacket with a large brown leather patch featuring an outlined floral cross design, partially colored in.

When it comes to stitching your piece onto your jacket, there are a couple of things you may want to try. If you have really thick leather, you could try using leather needles. These may help go through leather more easily and leave less obvious penetration marks.

Most of the time though, a regular needle will work. Stitch around your design as close as possible while still keeping an even edge all the way around. This will take some careful maneuvering with the jacket under your machine.

You might want to use a bit longer stitch than usual, so that the needle perforations in the real leather won't be too close together and weaken it.

Close-up of sewing machine stitching detailed leaf pattern on brown leather. Inset shows hand holding a pack of Schmetz leather sewing needles size 90/14.

Once your design is patched on, trim away the excess pleather around the edges. The closer you can get to the stitched edge, the neater your patch will look.

Close-up of hands cutting a brown leather piece with floral patterns embossed, using scissors; background shows black leather.

And that’s it! A totally wicked new look for your thrift store jacket, customized entirely by you. You choose the designs, the rotation, the colors ... everything!

Black leather jacket with a large brown leather patch on the back featuring an embroidered ornate cross and floral designs, worn by a person with curly blonde hair.

You can start your own motorcycle gang or just look biker tough with your new embroidered leather digs. Adding heavier-stitching designs to leather is easy once you know the pleather patch trick. If you get yourself some matching pleather, and keep your patch neat, no one will even notice! It will all look like one large seamless embroidered piece.

There are a lot of sad neglected leather jackets out there in those thrift stores. You know how that song goes... with only 20 dollars in your pocket, you can pop some tags and use your embroidery machine to seriously pimp some cool new jackets.

Woman with short curly blonde hair seen from behind, wearing a dark brown leather jacket with a large leather patch featuring an ornate cross design on the upper back.