Extra Special Touch: Our Story So Far…
Extra Special Touch is an award winning UK business based in the heart of Nottingham’s Sherwood Forest, founded by Heidi Lawton. Specialising in creating personalised linen for special occasions, Heidi and her team embroider napkins, handkerchiefs, silk lingerie and more. They proudly sell to customers all over the world, yet source their fabrics and laces locally fundamentally believing that supporting UK textiles is the right choice for the industry as well as the planet.
From celebrity parties to intimate weddings to even corporate events, Extra Special Touch can provide embroidered linen to finish any table, as well as gifts with a personal touch. Their designs have appeared in Vogue, Brides, The Lady, Woman and Home to name a few, as well as on leading wedding blogs such as Rock My Wedding, Love My Dress, Magpie Wedding and Smashing The Glass.
What makes Extra Special Touch different is their ability to adapt products to your needs, from creating embroidery that matches your hand writing, colour matching your theme or even adding your logo. They are proud to only use the best fabrics, and with Heidi’s extensive experience in embroidery design and costume history (making accessories for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Emma no less) and her eye for detail; Extra Special Touch is now one of the leading UK’s supplier of wedding handkerchiefs and custom embroidered napkins
My Story….. written by Heidi
Extra Special Touch began back in 2009 after making many beautiful items for my own wedding. With a natural-born love for period fashion, machine embroidery and a background in the textile trade, it was a natural step for me to start offering Nottingham Lace wedding accessories to couples who share my style.
I have always loved to craft and sew in order to produce gorgeous results; from hand-stitching dolls dress when I was younger to dress making through college. I always endeavoured to take my passion and make it more than just a hobby and so I enrolled on various college courses in order to study free machine embroidery, traditional millinery and theatre costume design. What I do is in my blood, and sitting in front of a sewing machine is where I feel most at home; which is why I’ve enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the fashion and textile industry and worked for many years within the digital embroidery field, using domestic and industrial embroidery machines.
Extra Special Touch combines my love of all of these things. A job where I get to hole up in my studio to play with fabric, threads and trimmings suits me down to the ground. And so, after the birth of my son in 2013, I gave up my full time job to focus on being a full time mummy and devoting my time to my wedding business.
Fast forward to 2019 – we have just celebrated 10 years since I launched Extra Special Touch, and one year since we moved into our gorgeous studio space at Ransom Wood. (We had a pretty cake and pin champagne to celebrate!)
My business has gone from strength to strength, and it’s so rewarding that my work has been recognised by several bridal magazines and online wedding blogs.
I adore the prettiness of weddings which inspires our embroidered hankies and napkins. I love the rich history of timeless textiles made on contemporary embroidery machines, the contrast of traditional cotton lace next to the luxury of its modern synthetic counterpart, and I’d choose sumptuous silk ribbon over polyester any day. All of these details create pretty keepsakes destined to become modern heirlooms – it’s the Extra Special Touch.
Our collection of vintage-inspired monogram wedding gifts and bridal accessories are inspired by sophisticated ladies of times gone by, with a current twist. They are all lovingly handmade from natural fabrics; silk, linen, cotton and lace. Specialising in handkerchiefs and garters, my team and I use local Nottingham lace to create these one-of-a-kind Nottingham Lace wedding accessories.
My favourite part about weddings? Hearing stories of mothers and fathers shedding a little tear when they receive their hankies. The feeling that we have created something from my home sewing studio in Nottingham that goes on to touch someone’s heart on such a special day is at the very core of what we do.
I have an amazing team of embroiderers and sewers, busily making our orders to ship all over the world.
Our custom wedding gifts and vintage-inspired bridal accessories are all available to buy through our website and Etsy shop. I continue to be inspired by my love of vintage, and the old embroidery and antique lace which form the rich tapestry of what we do. I’d love to hear from you if you have any bespoke ideas we can create for your wedding day. And you can keep up to date with all our Extra Special news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Heidi xx
