Patch backing types, and which one you actually want

The backing decides where a patch can live for the rest of its life, and it is chosen in about four seconds by most people ordering.

Hook-and-loop (Velcro)

The default here, and included in the price rather than charged as an upgrade.

The patch carries the hook side — the scratchy half. Loop panels are what plate carriers, flight suits, range bags and caps already have sewn onto them, so a hook-backed patch attaches to kit you already own.

Choose it if the patch will move between things, or if the gear it goes on has to be sanitised at short notice. That flexibility is the whole reason morale patches are usually hook-backed.

One thing to know: hook-and-loop adds a little stiffness and a couple of millimetres of thickness. On a 2-inch patch that is unnoticeable. Under a shoulder strap that sits directly on it, you will feel it.

Sew-on

A plain finished edge, no backing material, stitched down through the border.

The most permanent option and the flattest. It is the right choice for anything that will never move — a club jacket, a uniform where the patch is part of the garment, a bag panel you have committed to.

It also survives washing best, because there is no adhesive layer to break down and no hook field to collect lint.

Iron-on

A heat-activated adhesive film on the back. You press it with an iron or a heat press and it bonds.

Iron-on is convenient and it is the one most likely to disappoint, for reasons worth being blunt about:

• It bonds properly to cotton and cotton blends. On nylon, polyester shells or anything waterproof, the fabric can scorch before the adhesive flows.
• It is not permanent under repeated washing. Most iron-on patches eventually lift at a corner.
• Applying heat to a technical fabric can destroy a laminate or a DWR coating.

Our honest advice: iron it on, then sew the border anyway if the garment matters. Treat the adhesive as something that holds the patch still while you stitch it.

Plain

No backing at all. Chosen when you are attaching the patch by some other means — a sewing machine, a leatherworker, or a bag manufacturer building it into a panel.

What this costs

Nothing changes. Hook-and-loop is standard and included; sew-on, iron-on and plain are available at the same price. There is no backing upgrade fee, because the backing is not where the cost of a patch lives — the stitching is.

Say which you want before your proof is approved and it is simply what gets made.

A note on hook and loop panels

If you are ordering patches for people who do not already have loop panels on their kit, hook-backing is the wrong default. They will receive a patch that attaches to nothing. In that case sew-on is usually what you actually meant, and it is worth asking the group before you commit the whole run.