A few snaps for you from our trip to New York for the Gift Fair. As well as plenty of hard work, we packed in a good deal of shopping and eating. Favourite dinner was at Schillers – stop by for their macaroni cheese if you can. Gemma reckons it’s the best she’s ever tasted, and she’s carried out some pretty extensive research over the years.

Other highlights included stepping off the plane and heading straight to Ikea with our suitcases, several excellent hot chocolates in Soho and many hours of flat-pack furniture assembly.

We also met some wonderful people; special mentions to Jennifer and Sharon...we look forward to seeing you again very soon.

You may have heard about the giveaway we’ve been running on Twitter in conjunction with the folks at Red Hot Robot and Royal/T. We asked you to keep your eyes peeled between 13.00 and 13.30 US Central Time for our ‘SPREAD THE LOVE’ tweet. Once you’d spotted it the race was on to email either of the stores to be in with a chance of winning one of our limited edition trios of Love dolls by Kong Soo. Unfortunately we had a slight mishap...it turns out that Royal/T’s email address (store@royal-t.org) was bouncing all mail back to senders. A few of you were clever enough to try shop@royal-t.org instead – this address did work and that’s why the folks at Royal/T didn’t realise that anything was amiss. So whilst we have to give those of you sharp enough to try the shop@royal-t.org address brownie points for quick thinking, it wouldn’t be fair on everyone else if we awarded the prize to one of those entrants. So...we’re going to run the whole thing again next week. Same time but on Wednesday 17th February. We’re really, really sorry for any confusion. Thanks to all of you who bothered to get in touch to let us know that there was a problem.

This time we’ll only be running the Royal/T competition – please don’t email Red Hot Robot this time. Their giveaway worked just fine and we’ll be contacting those winners to let them know. And to make sure it all runs smoothly please use the following address to send your email to shop@royal-t.org

Let us know if you have any questions.

Stay tuned for news of more giveaways and prizes, if you become a fan on Facebook you’ll be the first to know. Just click here

We’re packing our bags and heading for NYC on Thursday. Can’t wait, we love it. If any of you will be at the NYIGF be sure to stop by and see us at booth 2148.

Also we’d love to hear your recommendations for amazing places to shop, eat and hang out around the city. We love trying new places...especially if they’re food related. Stay tuned for trip updates.

Happy New Year!

How’s 2010 working out for you so far? We’re well and truly back in the swing of things here. Outside it’s snowing big time, everywhere looks so pretty but we’re staying in the warm and trying not to eat what's left of the chocolates that are still lurking around from Christmas.

Before we headed off for our Christmas break we decided to celebrate the end of the year with a big walk in the snow. Despite a map and plenty of helpful advice from some friendly locals we still ended up getting lost. Deb brought along Tallulah who insisted upon being carried...

However Ed’s dog, Reg was made of stronger stuff...which was as relief as there’s no way we’d have been able to lift him let alone carry him.

We rounded the whole thing off with a hearty meal and bid farewell to the noughties with plenty of mulled wine at our favourite local pub.

Hope you all had lovely Christmasses; here’s to 2010!

Ta-da! Here it is, our fabulous Couture Contest exhibition at Royal/T. The two top shelves show the runners up (top 10), in the centre you can see Louise’s first prize doll and the bottom shelves show numbers 10-20 which were ‘highly commended’.

The dolls will be on display at Royal/T until January 18th. We’ll have close-ups of the top twenty dolls in the projects section soon along with a little profile of their creators.

The time has come for us to announce the winner of our Couture Contest.

We’ve had such fun with this project and we were so touched by both the quantity and quality of entries. In the end we had just over 100 bundles of brilliance arrive at Momiji HQ – they came from all over the globe, from people of different ages and backgrounds. Some entrants were fashion and textile students, some were from folks who love crafting as a hobby while others were diehard Momiji fans who were dedicated enough to get their sewing machines out and create their dream doll. We want to thank all of you so so much.

Initially when we launched the contest we decided that the top 10 dolls would be displayed at Royal/T in LA, but when Susan who owns the art space saw them all she couldn’t resist extending the exhibition so that she could show the top 20.

The judging took place on November 16th. Each judge awarded points to their top 20 dolls and then we calculated the places according to which dolls had the most points.

So....the moment you’ve all been waiting for...the winner is Louise Evans with her beautiful doll, Choux Choux. The judges loved her Marie Antoinette style and her towering felt wig.

Here’s a little profile about Louise and how she made her Momiji doll...

Your name 
Felt Mistress AKA Louise Evans
 
 Your doll’s name 
Choux Choux
 
Your home town
Wrexham
 
What was the inspiration for the design of your doll?
Besides the obvious nod to 18th Century  corseted bodices, panniered skirts, Marie Antoinette and big powdered wigs (I would so like to wear my hair like that for a day) I loved the opportunity to combine the two sides of my "sewing life" 1) The making of bespoke wedding dresses and 2) Soft plush character sculptures and plush toys. I have received a lot of strange comments  over the years from people who can't understand how I can enjoy both things, they always assume I prefer one to the other but it would be strange for me to give up either as sometimes I'm in a dress mood and sometimes I want to work on a smaller scale and produce a character plush. It's all sewing, which I love! So the Momiji competition was the ideal project for me. I kept getting emails from friends saying "this is so you" with a link to the Momiji website. Not only was I making a character plush but she was wearing a corseted silk dress!

What materials and techniques did you use to make your doll?
She was made using silk, felt, fleece, ribbon, rickrack braiding, buttons and beads (some of which came from my  Nana's button box which I used to play with as a child ) The hair was made of rouleau looping made from grey fleece and arranged on the felt doll shape in curls and then hand sewn  in place. The skirt and bodice was made in dupion silk (remnants from a wedding dress I had made a few years ago) and decorated with ribbon, braid and beads. The felt and fleece is made from recycled plastic bottles. I like to use found or recycled things as much as possible it's nice to give them a second "life".

What do you do for a living?
I make bespoke wedding dresses.
 
 Where is your favourite place?
Can't pick one place so I've narrowed it down to three :
On the Yurikamome line going over Rainbow bridge in Tokyo (after dark).
The studio that I share with Jonathan Edwards. Door shut, music on, surrounded with fabric and normally an organised mess!
Natural History Museum New York.
 
Tell us an interesting fact (or secret!) about yourself
A sewing machine needle broke and went into my eyeball and I still have a red dot on the white of my eye marking the spot!

Ouch..!

And now to announce the top ten places followed by our highly commended entries which take us up to 20. All of the dolls listed below, along with Louise’s are on display from today at Royal/T and will be there until January 18th. (You’ll see there are quite a few joint places as some dolls scored an equal amount of points)

The top 10

Choux Choux by Louise Evans 1st
Joy by Karen Syms 2nd
Sky by Katie Weselby 3rd
Delight by Helena Stamulak 4th
Evie by Rachel Doyle 5th
Ai by Yukiko Otsu 6th
Wilma Birdhouse by Nicola Summer-Smith = 7th
Evie by Danielle Hanson = 7th
Kitsune by Nadine Henderson 9th
Gretchen by Jennifer Zoellner = 10th
Maya by Penny Nuttall = 10th

Highly Commended

Sew Momiji by Corinne Hockley = 12th
Doodles by Isobel Edwards = 12th
Lilly by Debby Hawkins = 14th
Connie by Hannah Beattie = 14th
Beauty by Helena Stamulak 16th
Penelope Wanabe by Sarah Wells = 17th
Space Dolly by Veronica Rowlands = 17th
Sophie by Danielle Hanson 19th
Lilian by Anna Blåfield 20th

We’ll be updating our project section soon with more details of our top ten and highly commended dolls so you can have a good look at them all! Thanks again to everyone involved. If you’re in LA be sure to get yourself down to Royal/T so you can see all the dolls and if you go today (Sunday 20th December) they’re holding a special Momiji High Tea in their beautiful cafe in our honour! We can’t think of a more delicious way to round the whole thing off.

A couple of weeks ago we sent you an email asking you to share your wishes for 2010 with us. Our favourite one hundred made it onto our wishing tree at Royal/T in LA. The fabulous guys & girls there have decorated five Christmas trees in their Winter Wonderland inspired by some of their favourite brands. We made 100 wooden Momiji decorations adorned with glitter and hand-wrote your wishes on the back. If you’re in LA be sure to head to Culver City to get involved in their festive fun.

Thanks to all of you who sent in wishes by email and Twitter. Here are just a few of our favourites:

For world peace and for a flying V guitar :)

For a fun-packed, blissful, loved-up 2010

That I could be chosen for the Tokyo Arts Fest Trip next year and find a person I love!

That our strawberry farm has a good season next year...

For swift snowstorms and a warm winter romance.

I wish for decisiveness, inspiration and chocolate

I want to become a pastry chef...

To train my pet rats some super good tricks. My rats are called Toxic and Velcro.

That my Grandma will dance the slow foxtrot this Christmas.

To find my geek in glasses...

Sending you all lots of love and hoping all your dreams come true next year. x

Still shopping? Us too.

Here are the postage dates for website orders if you want to get your goodies in time for Christmas. These are the dates that have been supplied to us by the carriers we use so while we’ll do our best to make sure orders reach you, please understand that we can’t make any guarantees. To avoid disappointment get your order in as soon as you can!

For the UK:
Royal Mail 2nd Class: 18th December order before 2pm
Royal Mail 1st Class Signed For: 21st December order before 2pm
Interlink by 3pm next working day (UK Mainland Only): 23rd December order before Midday

For the United States including Hawaii and Alaska:
UPS Ground: 16th December order before 4am

We will be able to take orders over the Christmas period but we will not be able to send any orders out between the 24th December 2009 and the 3rd January 2010 as we’ll be at home eating and watching telly. Orders placed during this period will be processed from 4th January 2010.

The guys at Atom Plastic in Italy sent us over some photos from the launch of their brand new Milan store. Looks like they had an amazing night; they opened their doors to 500 guests for a full-on happy hour complete with live DJs, welcome kits and limited edition prizes.

If you’re in Milan be sure to stop by to get your Momiji fix. Atom Plastic stocks an amazing array of stuff for you to drool over including clothing, accessories, posters, books and international magazines. Sounds like the kind of place we could while away an hour or six. Big thanks to lovely Piero and Riccardo for the photos – we hope we’ll be over to see you soon.

Ciao x

Those of you that have been following the Momiji Couture Contest over on our contest blog will know that judging has taken place!

Back in July we challenged you to make a textile version of a Momiji doll. We launched the extravaganza at the New Designers exhibition in London and since then we’ve been pouncing on the postman as he’s arrived day after day with your creations.

A couple of weeks ago our panel of experts convened at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London to look at each entry and award points to their favourites. Here are a few pictures of the day; you can expect more news about what happens next later this week. Stay tuned.

We really can’t thank those of you who entered enough – the time, skill and love you stitched into the dolls was breathtaking.