Monogramming Towels

Last week I monogrammed the 7 towels pictured below. They came from WALMART and are sold individually in the store (for probably pretty cheap!). I did these for a friend who was heading to the beach with her family and wanted monogrammed towels for all of the grandkids (and for her and G-Dad). I think G-Dad is the cutest grandfather name! Anyway, I did the boy towels in Atilla (Monogram Wizard Plus) and the girl towels in Curly Q (with the exception of the J in Julia which is Uniblock; ulia is Curly Q). I thought they turned out cute and when I mentioned doing them on Facebook (along with 8 pillowcases that I didn’t take pics of), I had several comments on monogramming towels!

I worked for G-Dad for 10 years before I “retired” in to embroidery!

Today I monogrammed this beach towel from Target and it was a whopping $5.50! Orange, of course! Anyway, I took photos along the way so here is my post on monogramming towels!

First, I measure my center and mark it with an air erasable pen.

Here are the stabilizers I use for doing towels (and blankets, terry bibs, furry stuff, etc) ~ Iron on Tearaway Stabilizer (this is Sulky brand) and Solvy (also Sulky).

I iron the tearaway on the opposite side.

BTW, I always monogram towels on the opposite end of the tag!

I have my solvy on top and I’m ready to hoop!

Here it is hooped, and as you can see my center dot is pretty well lined up with the center of the hoop. This is by luck, not any method!

For this towel I chose my NEW Library Monogram Wizard Plus font that I purchased today for $7.99! Here is how I did it and why:

Letter Width: 85 ~ I made the letters skinnier so that I could squeeze the name inside my 5×7 hoop and I wanted them as tall as possible. Normally letter width is 100. Skinner=taller.

Kerning: 4 ~ kerning is making the letters closer together (-4 would be farther apart). Again, I did this so I could squeeze inside the 5×7 hoop and this allows me to make the letters a little bigger because they are closer together with less space in between them. Normal kerning (spacing) is set at 0!

Letter Size: 1.66 ~ If you can see on the bottom, with all of these factors my name is 6.99″ wide and 1.78″ tall. By making the letter width skinnier (85 vs. 100) and by moving the letters closer together (kerning 4), I was able to add .36″ to the height of my name! I know this is confusing but if you play around with the letter width and kerning you’ll see what I mean!

** ONE MORE THING… I like to use FILL STITCH on towels & blankets versus satin stitch! I think it covers the fluff of the towel and/or blanket and there is no looping. I was at a friend’s house once and she had some Pottery Barn monogrammed hand towels. I noticed they were fill stitch so since then, that’s the way I’ve done towels!

Since my machine is on a tool chest and not a stand, I put my hooped towel on my machine so that the excess hangs down in front. If this were a heavy blanket, I might let it rest on a chair in front of the stand. Since my towel is technically upside down, I rotated my name so that it sews right!

Ready to sew! I chose turquoise thread on the orange – LOVE!

Here is the completed towel and the monogram sews on top of the Solvy ~ that way the thread is not buried in the fluff of the towel! When you’re done you just pull it all off. Water will dissolve it also if you miss any. You also just pull off all of the iron on tearaway from the back of the towel.

Here it is! I also bought the same towel in lime/white stripes as well as hot pink/white stripes for G & Sissy! Did I mention that I LOVE ORANGE?????

I know this is very basic and most of you already know this! But, for the beginners, here is my post on monogramming towels! When I first started I messed up my first towel because I had no clue I needed Solvy on top!