So without further ado, the winner is…

…the She’s Got Bottle! Apron from iris+lily handmade.

Congratulations from everyone here at Folksy – we think it’s a deserved winner. We especially like the fact that the material has been inventively recycled from a cotton twill curtain!

We’ll be in contact with the winner and everyone who had a shortlisted item shortly to give you your prizes, and the items will be returned to you just as soon as we’ve negotiated the Post Office obstacle course queues.

And don’t forget, once the items are returned, they’ll be available for sale from early next week (provided the makers don’t decide to keep them for themselves!). So if any of the items take your fancy, get ready to snap it up before someone else does!

So, David Hieatt, the man (founder) from howies has chosen his favourite items from the Folksy longlist from the competition. We had around 45 items submitted which is great considering the timescales were tight and none of you (none!) do any sport at all so were floundering with the brief initially! Anyway, the shortlisted people / items are:

Bbel has got two in and wins the Michael Phelps Folksy award ….

cloudhopping saddles in on her horse …

lusummers has her wonderful “dog sick” collage…

Claire has this fab howies girl…

Sharon has her amazing apron…

Helena camps it up…(sorry, it’s been a long day and frankly the puns are for my own amusement)

Lucyplayer makes it with her ‘simple’ illustration …

Littlechook’s tremendous teatowel cleans up the tail …

howies picked 9 items for the display. We’re contacting you chosen one’s now to arrange the logistics of your stuff getting to London so please check you emails and better still drop us a mail with your contact phone no. This is turning all very tiswas, isn’t it?

Well done to you all and thank you ever so much for submitting your work. Whilst this is a trial we know that it’s already been a success so we’ll be doing more in the future and giving you the opportunity to show how great you all are to a wider audience. If we had blankety blank chequebooks and pens we’d be handing them out now.

Neat. I particularly like the inclusion of the washing-line peg. It feels a bit of an anachronism with all the other more modern things there. All hail the peg.

For those of you unfamiliar with howies, they’re a clothing brand (with a surfing background) that make and do good stuff. Their made stuff is all organic cotton, fair trade and they carry this ethos over into other aspects of their business. They have an “earth tax” which gives 1% of revenue or 10% of profits (whichever is greater) to “grass roots and environmental projects” and they do the “Do Lectures” (currently live in some woods in deepest Wales).

So, having established they are nice people doing good stuff, what about the competition? Well, howies have written the brief and all the information and stuff can be found on the competition page but the basics are:

• You make something that fits the howies brief (the image above gives the gist of it) and the deadline for submissions is the 17th of September at 9am
• You list your thing on folksy with the tag “howies” and by doing that you enter the competition
• In the listing description you say a bit about why you’ve made what you’ve made (it helps to know where you’re coming from…)
• howies pick their favourite 11 things which will be displayed in their Carnaby St. store in London until the 24th September where members of the public can vote on their favourite
• The winner will receive £150 in cash with the runners-up receiving £25 of howies vouchers each as well as lots of good publicity :)

Good, eh? So, head over to the competition page for all the details. If this proves to be a success we’ll be rolling out competitions with like-minded partners on an on-going basis.