Hi everyone,
Playing tetris today, trying to tidy up a ton of sewing stuff – no, I did not intend that line of alliteration but we'll let it stand!
Over the last few years, it's been interesting (and good) to see a greater acknowledgement and place for aboriginal art in all manner of design.
Misty Threads' signature fabric range for many years has been AAD or Australian Aboriginal Designs. AAD fabrics are produced by an Australian company, established in the early 1990s to showcase and sell fabrics designed by Aboriginal artists and now the world's largest manufacturer of Australian Aboriginal designer fabrics.
Aboriginal art is one of the more ancient traditional arts in the world with some examples of rock art believed to be up to 50,000 years or older, portraying the dreamtime through cave painting, rock painting and sand or ground painting. Today, Aboriginal artists continue to draw from the dreamtime, honouring their ancestors and the land through a variety of media, including these wonderful fabric designs.
Art has always been a medium to express, communicate and empathise with others. The art in the fabrics shows us the colours and landscapes of our country just as the dreamtime stories tell us its history.
From a quilter's point of view, the wonderful colours and design lines are a joy to work with. We've made a lot of quilts with our Aboriginal fabrics over the last five years, both for the shop and for customers. These are just a few of them below.
L to R: Australian Dreaming, this example a bit faded but an effective design and very popular; AAD Stripes, a play with scraps; AAD Circles, flows beautifully, a quilt by Chris Timmons; AAD Diamonds, a lovely, sparkly design from a Michelle Marvig pattern called Left and Right; AAD Stepping Stones, a kit but would also be good to use up scraps, also designed by Chris T.
In this next photo, you can also see the quilting, (kindly and beautifully done by Nick and Anne McGee), which keeps in theme and really enhances the quilts.
We do have the kits for some of the quilts, which can be found on the website here and, of course, our great AAD fabrics are also available here. We can make up custom kits on request – just contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Please do consider these fabrics for your quilts and general sewing; they are fun to play with and work equally well with many other fabrics. The fabrics themselves are good to work with. Next time, we'll show you some of the lovely non-quilt bits and pieces we've made with them.
Stay safe.
Meg
