Pink and green stripe

I often get asked to personalise a gift for a special teacher. The children can become part of the process and choose the fabric that best suits their favourite teacher. This process can take a while!

As each towel is hand made you can easily have a nick name.

This gift is unique and will not be found on the High Street! Of course this will also last forever!!

Mrs Smith in pink floral

The swimming logo

After we had permission from the swim school we set about making a logo in a yellow material.

Swim logo

We were really pleased with the result and we know our customer was too.

Ollie’s towel

Personalised towel with car

Choosing a name is one of the most important, exciting things you do when you are planning for your first baby. We spent hours scouring the books and arguing about the best names for our first born in 1991. When she was born we decided the name we had chosen did not suit our little girl and I made my long suffering husband bring back the books to my hospital bed. I felt like death at the time but it had to be done. Then I stumbled upon ‘Isabel’ – that was it – I loved the name and our darling daughter was named. Having said that she became an ‘Izzie’ almost straight away!

Baby Isabel

I love my job as I get asked to personalise so many interesting names on to towels and dressing gowns. I’ve noticed recently that the traditional names are coming back – George and Henry and girls’ names such as Sophia and Rose. This may be a sign of the times or it may be that there is a royal baby on the way – I’m not sure?

George with his personalised towel

Today I had an ‘Audrey’ order which made me smile as you rarely hear children called that name anymore!

Some unusual names I’ve had the last couple of months,

Personalised towel and flannel in flags

Inca, Esme, Lorelai, Petra, Cormac, Darjan, Zahira and Lincoln

Lorelai towel

I have mixed feelings about this.

Firstly, it means that they liked the gift and so I take it as a compliment. However it makes me feel sad too.

Baby’s personalised towel

I remember a friend lying on her death bed dying of cancer. She said to me, ‘Never keep anything for best Jane’. She had a loft full of things she had kept for best and deeply regretted it.

So my message to everyone is, never keep anything for best. Enjoy your baby towel, use it and love it! Then when it looks too tatty – cut it up and use it for drying the dog!

Doggy towel!

Perfectly wrapped Christmas gift

A tweeter has asked me to come up with some gift ideas for three children and her sister, husband and newborn. At Christmas I often have to do a number of towels for a person and all their Christmas shopping is done!

My record last year was 27 bath towels for one customer! All done by November 1st.

These are not to be found on the high street and each one is unique.

Budget less than £10?

If you want to spend under £10. The initialled flannel comes in at £8 and you can put some lovely soap or bubble bath to make it look special.

Flannel £8 in Pink floral

Budget less than £20?

The hand towel (50cms x 90cms) comes in at £18 and comes in 4 colours and I can fit nine letters on it. So – you can have a name or a nick name.

Hand towel in brown floral (on top)

Budget under £35?

The £34 Egyptian cotton bath towels are my really popular size. These are really practical for a newborn and younger child. If you want organic & unbleached then the beautifully soft Turkish hooded towels come in at £34 as well – great value.

Bath towel in blue gingham

Budget under £40?

The big sheets are £39 and do very well for the adult or the older child.  Lots of great fabrics on my site under FABULOUS FABRICS. You could choose a child’s dressing gown for £39 -  very practical and long lasting.

A sheet in a daisy fabric

All prices include letters. Post will be added at £5.50 but if you spent £85 then postage is free. Gift wrap is £3.50.

Boys can have tartans or ginghams and for the girls I have girly fabrics or others in my glory box – just ask. Tell me what the child/recipient is like and I know I can accommodate. Imelda Marcos loved shoes and I collect fabric!!

Red, dark blue, cream and white towels

So for my tweeter, a couple more pictures but do get in touch so I can help you jane@janehamerton.com

Coloured squares on a dark blue towel

New green roses

High heeled shoes

Red tartan on blue

Hearts on the red towel

Those who know me, realise by now, I get a kick out of giving to charity.

Hearts

This time I am going to support all those people who work tirelessly to organise events for charity for their raffle table. I know how time consuming and hard it is to raise money.

So with this November’s newsletter I am giving five bath towels away.

Hands

They can have names or shapes on them. Let me know what you would like. Email me jane@janehamerton.com or ring 01473 405993

Elephant

Boat shape

Everyone knows how I love twitter so this was fun  to do.

Born in to rock ‘n’ roll family

I loved doing this set of towels for a new born baby. We had to get the fabric from the States & I washed it until no colour ran and combined as much of the text as I could. They went down really well.

Some towels are for special birthdays and we all have those!

40th birthday and a special message

For Towel Day

Wedding date

Baby date

I love France and have enjoyed working out the accents and cedillas to go on my towels.

Quite a few of my towels go abroad. I have had to applique towels in Danish to go to a holiday home, some have gone to the Far East & Japan

I love doing exotic names too

Gold on white towels

Best Mum

Over the past 20 years I have enjoyed sewing towels for people who want to give something really special to members of their family.

Family members

I love the fact the towels will be used almost every day so they make amazing value gifts.

His and Hers

Towels are rather boring everyday items but they can be made a little more interesting!

Twitter favourite

I received an email out of the blue which made me jump for joy. It illustrated exactly what I have been striving for in my business.

As a small business owner I have found the challenges enormous in the last three years. There are peaks and troughs but somehow we keep going.

This made it all worthwhile:

Dear Jane

Many many thanks for the beautiful personalised towels which I gave as a gift to my Niece’s new-born baby boy. It was so beautifully presented she didn’t want to take the ribbon off. She also said they were too good to use….but I have managed to persuade her to use them.

My apologies for not thanking you earlier as I ordered in April, and you were so quick in sending as I needed it quite quickly.

Thank you so much, will definitely be ordering again from you.

Kind regards

Debra Mildon 

Baby Boy towel gift