Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!: square flower

Welcome to the Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop!

Molas! by Kate Mathews

The book I dusted off is Molas!: Patterns, Techniques & Projects for Colorful Applique by Kate Mathews. I've been looking at this book in my bookcase for several years but never got around to reading and trying it out. Since I've been enjoying doing hand-work recently, I thought that it would be the perfect book and technique to try.

What is a Mola?

A Mola is a textile tradition of the Kuna, an aboriginal people from the Panama area. I'm sure that you've seen their work - it is bright, hand-made, using reverse appliqué and appliqué. For the reverse appliqué, they can have up to 7 layers of different colours of solids. Pieces can also include embroidery. Traditional pieces are used as part of their blouses.

Funky Square Flower Mola

Here is my interpretation of a Mola. I wanted to use an original pattern that wouldn't look out of place in a Mola. I thought that the square flower that I free motion quilted a few weeks ago might work.

My interpretation of a Mola.

I started with three layers of Kona cotton since I didn't want to make it too complicated and didn't want to sew through too many layers. As you can see, the hot pink is the top layer, followed by maroon and then light pink.

I started by drawing the square flower with a Frixion pen and then cutting around it, adding about a ¼" so that I can turn over the edge to appliqué. Cutting around the flower gave me a maroon background, which is what you see around the hot pink flower.

The next step was to cut the maroon fabric to let the light pink fabric show. I could have cut deeper into the maroon so that there would be light pink between the petals, but my appliqué skills weren't up to it. Two of the spaces between the petals are deeper than the others, mostly because they were wider. The light pink is actually my backing.

Reverse-appliqué to let the maroon and light pink fabrics show

Adding light green between the layers

One of the techniques used in the making of Molas is to add other coloured fabric between the background layers. In this instance, I placed light green fabric beneath the hot pink layer, but only along the edge of the piece. I then cut through to the light green fabric for the three smaller leaves as well as the middle of the larger leaf. The dark green leaf was appliquéd and then I cut (very, very carefully) through the layers to get to the light green.

I embellished the leaves with embroidery and also couched some yarn for the stem. This project has been great to practice my TAST embroidery stitches.

I used the same technique to add the yellow and lilac rectangles, but this time I cut the top hot pink fabric and inserted small scraps of the new fabric under it. Last night I went into my stash of beads, stones and buttons to embellish the rectangles.

Adding other colours to the mix

Embroidering a butterfly

and practicing my TAST stitches

I needed to add something to the bottom of the piece but didn't have the time or patience to do more appliqué. I used 3 strands of embroidery floss as well as some perle cotton.

Creating huge blanket stitches

What I learned

This technique is quite demanding (as in finicky) so I found it difficult to do. I have very large hands and fingers that are not very nimble - so I find doing needle-turn appliqué and reverse appliqué difficult, unless the pieces are quite large.
As I mentioned, I was quite happy to stop appliqueing. Embroidery and other embellishment are also fun and will make my piece unique.
Having lived with first nation people (I married into the family), I am very sensitive to cultural appropriation, so the last thing I wanted was to create a traditional Mola - although I needn't worry - my skill level is really not up to it.
I found that doing embroidery around the reverse applique was a great way to hide my less than perfect stitches.
I'm not very good at doing anything for a long time, so I didn't even try to make my fly stitches even around the edge. Since this was for fun and my first piece with such extensive and varied embroidery stitches, I gave myself a lot of slack. I know that practice makes us much better and I'm sure that I will use some of these techniques eventually, although probably not extensively - it's just wasn't that much fun 😊
I find it so liberating to just let myself play with what I want. I do make an effort to give new techniques a chance but sometimes it's pretty obvious what I could keep doing and get good at and what would just be plain tedious for me.
Finally, this piece is not quite finished. I'm going to add more beads and figure out what to add on the top. I'll post my finished piece soon - so come back to check it out!

Related links

Molas!: Patterns, Techniques & Projects for Colorful Applique by Kate Mathews
There are lots of sites with information on Molas (including this book) but for a quick reference, read about Molas on Wikipedia.
Free Motion Mavericks and funky square flowers, January 30, 2019
Take a Stitch Tuesday (TAST) with Pintangle