Making Molas

Mola designs originate from South America, apparently they started with women painting their bodies, but the missionaries put a stop to that, so instead the ladies made their designs from fabric.  Made from up to seven layers of fabric, using reverse applique and a needturn method, they would design the back and front of a blouse.  when the blouse got too worn to be used, the design would be cut away and sold to collectors. (See Wiki for more info, and samples)

Our interest at Chersey Museum's Fun With fabric class started because Deborah had brought in this sample that her mum bought in Mexico

Having tried needle turn applique before, we all felt that it was not a very satisfactory method, so I decided to use felt instead.

These two need some work doing, but should be fab

And these you can see are coming up really well already.

We tried a number of ways of layering the fabric, but the best way seemed to be the way Scarlet did this cat.  She draw the image onto freeze paper, and ironed that onto the background (framing) fabric, in this case black and cut out the design.  The cut away freezer paper was used to gauge the necessary size of the next layer, and the orange felt was cut bigger than the freezer paper cat, and was then put behind the opening, and details were cut out.  She is now sewing different colours for the nose, eyes and ears, and will then stitch down the yellow, cut the same size as the black, to hold it all in place

Not bad eh?

Benta@SLIKstitches.co.uk

February at Chertsey Museum

 Thanks to this book

And these pre-made samples (thanks Avril) we learnt reverse applique

With the help of freezer paper to stabilise the block fabric (the square) we were apply to apply a second fabric behind the fabric, with no visible stitches :-)

Two class samples

 And back and front of one with a fussy cut applique patch

Benta@SLIKstitches.co.uk