Traditional Hand Stitched Designs

Before the introduction of kevlar race suits in the late 1990’s speedway race jackets were worn to indicate a rider’s team or nationality and race number for team and individual competitions, including league racing and World Championships. Up until the early 1980’s they were traditionally made by stitching coloured material onto the body of the race jacket, rather than the screen printed or computer printed designs more commonly seen since then.

I specialise in creating accurate, high quality, hand stitched race jackets from this golden age of speedway - from the dawn of the sport until the early 1990’s.

My race jackets are as close to original as possible in their design, materials and construction. I use traditional techniques to make patterns from original race jackets and other reference sources including period photographs, magazines, books and speaking with fellow collectors and ex-riders. In keeping with the spirit of these old race jackets I use a 1940’s hand-crank Singer sewing machine for their creation.

Where it is not cost effective to reproduce one-off screen printed designs I have developed a number of hand painting techniques using vinyl screen printing inks. For some designs I also make use of digital printing directly onto the race jacket material.