Fashion sans Frontières at Festival of Quilts

Thanks to Jennie Rayment, who invited me as her guest so I was very close to the stage, I can report some images from the Fashion sans Frontières show at Festival of Quilts last Friday. British and Russian quilters competed for points awarded (somewhat haphazardly) by the audience. Here are some of the outfits. The categories are daywear, accessories, evening wear and wearable art. More information from the sponsors is here.

Andrey Yustellis runs Astreya, a magazine publishing house in Moscow which specialises in needlecrafts including cross stitch and quilting. After visiting Festival of Quilts in 2003, Andrey challenged Creative Exhibitions to take on the might of Russian fashion quilting with a team of UK textile artists. And so started the Russian Challenge – now known as Fashion sans Frontières.

Русские читатели, пожалуйста, используйте Перевести этот блог инструмент (справа), чтобы перевести на русский язык!

The Russian quilters went first, then the UK. My photos are in the same order as the designers - as I don't know the Russian designers personally, I hope I've identified them correctly in the photos!

The Russians are Tatiana Kiseleva, Ksenia Dmitrieva, Elena Voronova, Marina Tulupova, Anna Chufarovskaya, Galina Krasnikova and Tatiana Lazareva. The first section is Daywear.


The British quilters are Angela Madden, Annette Claxton, Ferret, Helen Deighan, Bex Farr & Lucy Holbrook and Jennie Rayment. Daywear -


The idea for the Accessories section seemed to have got lost a bit in translation, with the Russian designers opting for complete outfits to go with their accessories - more a concept of matching accessories and outfits - while the UK designers kept the focus on the accessories themselves.


British - the photos don't do justice to Angela's sparkling collar and bracelet or Ferret's leather laptop case.


Likewise the Russian Evening Wear also seemed to have a slightly different concept of evening from the British entries, but a distinctly Russian flavour to most of the ensembles -


Angela Madden is just stepping onto the stage behind Tatiana Lazareva in the photo above. Unfortunately my camera wasn't processing the images fast enough to get a photo of the front of her evening dress, but here's the back view - gorgeous bodice.


The final section was wearable art. The quilters really went all out for this!



British section -


Tet modelled Ferret's quilted armour - with ferrets quilted across the front and a real sword.


Finale -


EDIT - Can anyone send me links to the Russian quiters' websites? I would like to be able to add links to them. My Googling ability in Russian is very poor!