Illustrator - How to create Varsity Effect

Hello guys, welcome back for more Illustrator tutorials. It's been along time since the last tutorials, and to be honest, I still beginner to this software, so let's learn this together, yeah? :)
So the reason I make this category, was not only to share to everyone about general knowledge about Illustrator, but also a note for me, for example, if I forgot, I could just check on my blog to read again.

And before we begin, I would like to thank tutplus for the tutors.
So without any further, let's get started. :)

1. Setting up document
As we know, varsity has it's own colour, so let's build the colour palette before we begin.
And at this momment we'll be using RGB as our main color palette.

Now, let's draw a rectangle as big as our document, and fill it with dark blue.
This is optional, wether you want it or not, you can lock the background by going to Object > Lock > Selection.

For the font, it's up to you guys, but for me, I'm using a "Pristina" font, and scale it to 200pt.
Then, remove the color of the font.


2. Adding Strokes and Effects
This is the 2nd and the last step for this tutorial as we're going to cover up all the way to the end.
First, on the appearrance menu, click add new fill button, and fill the blue color.

Add new fill again, but this time, it's a black-to-white gradient, and inside it, change the degree to -90 degrees.

In the appearrance menu, select the gradient menu, and let's add Pointillize effect. Go to the Effect menu and choose Pixelate > Pointilize.  Enter a Cell Size of 4. 

Double-check your Document Raster Effects settings under the Effect menu. They should be set to Medium or High.

Now, let's click the Opacity of the gradient fill in the Appearance panel and change the Blending Mode to Overlay. Set the Opacity to 30%. By now, we'll have a nice blue color on our text.

It's time to put a stroke to our text. To do that, click on "Add new Stroke" button,  and on the Appearance panel. Set its color to white, and the point size between 42.
The size of the stroke is depends on your font, the size is just to get rid the hole on the text, so increase the size so the font background will be covered by white color like the picture below.

Don't worry about the spikes on the edges, we'll fix that later. 
Add a new stroke, and set its color to Red. Change the stroke weight to about 8 pts.

Keep the new red stroke selected in the Appearance panel and go to Effect > Path > Offset Path.
The reason for this is to keep the red stroke to sit on the edge of our font. So as usual, the size is depends on our font.

Now, we don't want the red strokes overlapping, so to fix this, go back to the Effect menu to Pathfinder >Add.
This will apply the Add function as a live effect, which is different than using the Pathfinder panel, which would alter the paths and make them uneditable.

Now, let's select the red stroke, and duplicate it, and change the color into white with 1pt of size.

Click to open the Stroke panel inside the Appearance panel. Change the Cap style to rounded, and tick the Dashed Line checkbox and enter a dash of 2 points and a gap of 2 points.
This will make the white stroke look like stitching.
We don't have to fill in the rest of the fields, because the dash and gap will repeat.

Duplicate the red stroke by selecting it and clicking the Duplicate Selected Item icon at the bottom of the Appearance panel. Change its color to Dark Red, and change its stroke weight to 3 pts.
Click Offset Path to change the settings. Change the offset to 27 pts.

Now let's change the pattern of the red stroke.

Last step is to put Inner glow.
Select the blue color text and go to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow. Set the Blending Mode to Screen, the Opacity to 90% and the Blur to 2 pts. Tick the Edge radio button.

And it's done!
I hope you guys enjoy the tutorials. :)
Sorry it's abit rush as I'm about to be late for my class. Cya!