A quick word on what this tool does and doesn’t do. It shows you size and placement honestly. It does not try to show you what the finished embroidery will look like — and that is deliberate. No automatic preview can do that truthfully, and pretending otherwise is how many buyers get disappointed. More on that below.

Recommended sizes by placement

Every garment and logo patch is different, but these are the sizes that work in practice for most orders:

Left chest (shirts, polos, jackets). 7–9 cm wide is the standard “corporate logo” size. Under 6 cm, fine detail and small text start to disappear; over 10 cm it begins to read as a large decorative patch rather than a discreet logo.

Cap front. The usable area on a standard 6-panel cap is about 13 cm wide and 6 cm tall. Most cap logos are 9–11 cm wide. Anything taller than ~6 cm runs into the seams and the curve of the panels.

Sleeve (upper arm). 8 cm is typical. The upper arm is narrower than people expect — roughly 10–12 cm of usable flat width — so oversized sleeve patches wrap and distort.

Back (jackets, workwear, club colours). Large back patches are usually 25–30 cm across. This is where detailed artwork has room to breathe.

Name badge. A single line of a name is usually around 9–12 cm wide and 2.5–3.5 cm tall, which keeps the lettering comfortably above the readability minimum.

Small round / novelty. 5–8 cm. Below 5 cm, keep the design simple — one icon and minimal text.

Why we don’t show so-called “design preview” (the honest bit)

You have probably seen suppliers show a shiny, photorealistic mockup of your logo as a patch. It looks convincing. It is also, almost always, misleading — and it is one of the most common reasons people end up with a patch that looks nothing like what they were promised.

Here is what those previews don’t tell you:

• Thread has real thickness. Fine lines and tiny gaps that look crisp on screen merge together in thread. A logo has to be adapted for stitching, not simply “converted.”
• Small lettering doesn’t survive. Text under about 4 mm tall cannot hold its shape in embroidery. On an 8 cm patch, that rules out a lot of fine print — no honest preview will warn you, but the finished patch will.
• Gradients and photographic colour don’t exist in thread. Embroidery uses solid thread colours. A smooth on-screen gradient becomes either colour bands or a single colour. This is a limit — and also exactly the reason a well-made embroidered patch has that distinctive, tactile, premium look that print never achieves.

An automatic tool cannot make these judgements. Only an experienced embroidery designer can — someone who works at the machines, adjusts stitch files daily, and knows what a given artwork will actually do in thread. That is how we work: before production, our designer adapts your artwork by hand and sends you a real stitch preview that reflects what you will actually receive.

And for orders of 50 pieces or more, we stitch a physical sample and send you a photo of the real patch before we run the full batch. A supplier drop-shipping from an overseas factory cannot do that — because they usually never touch a machine.

Still not sure?

Send us your logo and tell us where it goes. We’ll recommend a size, adapt the design for embroidery, and send you a real preview — usually within one working day.

FAQ