Clearly in WWII and later there are service members who have their ribbons sewn on to their dress uniforms. Personally I never saw this while in from 2006-2010, but have any of you seen anyone with sewn on ribbons? Everyone I saw as well as my class A's were all the pin on type with a racking system.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Dent

Nope, never saw them later than the 1950's. Danny

Yeah sewn on or embroiderd ribbons, it's basicaly a fashion that died out I would say by the mid 1960s, I would imagine it was the same in all the other branches of the Armed Forces, but it was something that was worn for awhile afterwards by servicemen, usally officers and senior NCOs if they had it done, you know like take a Senior Chief Petty Officer, he got it done up in the Phillipines say in 1959, and IF he did not have to add more ribbons to his rack, he could conceivably wear this coat for years. The use of these type of sewn on or embroidered ribbons did have a major drawback as you can imagine, like the Senior Chief Petty Officer who got no addintional awards and didn't have to upgrade his rack, the reality is of course differant, and while these type of ribbons were snazzy and unique, they would have to be removed and in essence thrown away if the individual recieved a entirly new award, I,m not talking about a situation were he was awarded a seconded or third award of a medal, say like a ARCOM, here he could just add another device right, so I guess maybe one reason this fashion died out was the start of the Vietnam War and most lifers would now have to add alot of more ribbons if they were over there, and it didn't seem worth the time, effort and money to do this anymore. But you never know, one might dicover a rogue coat with sewn on or embroiderd ribbons from the late 60s, especially for a young Vietnam combat decorated Officer and or Warrant Officer, even one maybe from the 1970s might be found, but in the case of the latter that would be a rare example I,m thinking.

I don't have them (I think my sister does), but my father had embroidered ribbons when he retired in '67. they were made in a patch form with two three row ribbon bars sewn into them. He had a set made with backing material for blues and whites. My father only wore three rows. he was awarded more, but chose to wear only 9 because, as he said, no one knows the differance anyway and 9 is a nice geometric patern that fit well over a jumper pocket. He picked his most common and prettiest ones, (he liked his China service and Asia Occupation). While not sewn to the uniform, they were embroidered. He never bothered with adding the VN ribbons. I'll check with my sister to see if she has them.

Yeah sewn on or embroiderd ribbons, it's basicaly a fashion that died out I would say by the mid 1960s, I would imagine it was the same in all the other branches of the Armed Forces, but it was something that was worn for awhile afterwards by servicemen, usally officers and senior NCOs if they had it done, you know like take a Senior Chief Petty Officer, he got it done up in the Phillipines say in 1959, and IF he did not have to add more ribbons to his rack, he could conceivably wear this coat for years. The use of these type of sewn on or embroidered ribbons did have a major drawback as you can imagine, like the Senior Chief Petty Officer who got no addintional awards and didn't have to upgrade his rack, the reality is of course differant, and while these type of ribbons were snazzy and unique, they would have to be removed and in essence thrown away if the individual recieved a entirly new award, I,m not talking about a situation were he was awarded a seconded or third award of a medal, say like a ARCOM, here he could just add another device right, so I guess maybe one reason this fashion died out was the start of the Vietnam War and most lifers would now have to add alot of more ribbons if they were over there, and it didn't seem worth the time, effort and money to do this anymore. But you never know, one might dicover a rogue coat with sewn on or embroiderd ribbons from the late 60s, especially for a young Vietnam combat decorated Officer and or Warrant Officer, even one maybe from the 1970s might be found, but in the case of the latter that would be a rare example I,m thinking.

 

 

Very logical and astute observations about who would be most likely to wear these. It does make sense to have these done in a more 'stable' type environment for the career path. If I were to do them, I would have them done in such a way as each individual ribbon could be removed from the bar just in case I was awarded a new medal. The above poster also mentioned something interesting to consider as well, the choice of which ribbons and how many to display. There was a choice in my unit as to which combat patch to wear and I believe it is up to the individual soldier to decide what he or she wants to display. I'm not sure there is a regulation for the mandatory wear of awards.

If you look around on in this forum, Unforms and down in the Medals Forum you will see numerous examples of the embroidered ribbon racks, these are embroidered on an appropriate piece of matching material, the material depending on the coats color right, like Navy Blue or White for Navy & Coast Guard, even the Marine Corps' and Army's Officers whites of the 50s 60s, Dark Blue for Air Force, Olive Drab and the later Army Green 44 cloth, the whole affair was made up, and then the entire rack sewn on by using the little bit of material left around the rack to BITE the thread, as mentioned, if one recieved another completely new Award, than there lies the problem, lets say a Marine Major in 1956 did some heroic act at a Stateside base, say El Toro, that merited him to be awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, a decoration he never received before, well what he do now? he might make up or have made up a whole new embroidered rack, mail ordered from Japan or some such place, in those days in the 50s he just might, or he might say the heck with and remove the sewn on embroidered rack and add ribbon mounts, but as the 60s wore on I sure alot of guys that had embroidered racks just let them go when they started to receive new awards for medals they never received before, and just used metal or plastic ribbon mounts.

 

Another problem if you get down to it was Devices, on alot of these racks we see embroidered devices, not much of a problem on Campaign Ribbons as the number of Campaign Stars are established for the campaign the man was in, WWII, Korea, but what if he received say a retroactive award of a Bronze Star or say an Air Medal or both, to name but two valor decorations, to go along with the three he has already been awared in WWII and Korea? you could try and PICK out thread of the two Oak Leafs on the Bronze Star or Air Medal already embroidered on the ribbons, but that in all likeness damage the ribbons delicate embroidery, it also would be very hard to do, even if you muddled through and wear succesfull, you now have try and find a way to add the metal devices to upgrade the award, and that would be almost immpossible to do really, as you would not be able to push the device prongs all the way though the ribbon and the wool backing, even if you removed the rack to try, the most you could hope for is to just penetrate the ribbon with the prongs, here the prongs would be rather straight and wouldn't bite, thus running the risk of the devices falling away down the line.

 

So quite a conundrum there right, I,m just giving examples of the potential difficulties, but from the large amount of these emroidered ranks we see that still exsit, it seem the ones that had them muddled through Ok. Now the directly embroiderd ranks, normally bullion, they were easier to deal with, an Army, Marine, Air Force Captain, now promoted to Major? here he would just pick out the Captains Bars on the shoulder loops and start all over again, Bullion directly embroidered or this time around going with metal ranks, but if he decided to use metal ranks, and he was Army, it would look alittle funny if all the other insignia on the lapels was directly embroidered, so here he might get a pair of Bullion Major Leafs embroidered on a piece of matching cloth and use them.

There is a new method of making ribbon racks, instead of the standard slide on ribbons, Marlow White makes a rack that is thinner and while I doubt they are sewn on, they definitely look different. Here is a side shot taken off their website.

 

I've tried to think a manner of modern sew one ribbons for my father's & brother's Class As both of whom are retired & I get asked to continuously set their uniforms up every Veterans Day. Also for my own uniform after I retire next year.

There is a new method of making ribbon racks, instead of the standard slide on ribbons, Marlow White makes a rack that is thinner and while I doubt they are sewn on, they definitely look different. Here is a side shot taken off their website.

 

 

 

Interesting. Do they have a forward or face of photo of these racks they offer for sale?

Not that I could find. Here is the link where I got it from. I'm on my way to work so I don't have time right now to look.

 

http://www.marlowwhite.com/ribbon-racks.html

I'm kind of surprised that Marlow White is pushing thicker racks of ribbons. The ones on the right are like the ones from Ultra Thin (they might even be from Ultra Thin, though several other companies make these) and are quite popular. During my career, I went from regular slide on ribbons to Leu's ribbons while I was an O-1 to O-2. The problem with Leu's is that you had to have a set for each color of uniform, and doing three sets every time I got a new award was painful on the pocketbook. So, I switched to the ribbons made by some dude's trophy shop in So Cal (I can't remember the name for the life of me). They were very cool because they were slightly thicker than Ultra Thin and were about 1/8" taller...more like the traditional WW2 era Navy awards. I really liked those, but he eventually went out of business, which I found out when I needed a new set made in about 2006. I finally just went with Ultra Thin and wore those for the remainder of my career. I have no complaints about them and they lasted through multiple events, deployments, and so on. The only problem I ever saw with an Ultra Thin set was one really, really hot Naval Academy graduation where the ribbons on the guys who were standing in the sun started to warp due to the heat and the plastic backing of the ribbons. Ouch!

 

As far as sewn-on ribbons, I can't see why anyone would do that because most cleaners will shy away from cleaning them, particularly since the ones that would be sewn on would be Leu's and it would be so easy to jack up the individual threads. If I were a dry cleaner, I'd tell the person with the uniform to remove the ribbons before bringing it in for cleaning. And since it's a bear to get the ribbons perfectly level (at least for naval officers, since the breast pocket is on an angle) I wouldn't dream of having to resew them every time I got the uniform cleaned. No thanks!

 

Dave