A Mola-icious Day at Priscilla's!

This is one of my favorites with the four colorful fish.

Well, Marcia and I hadn’t gotten together with Priscilla for a few weeks so were looking forward to a day out on her new patio with her new patio furniture (she had a windfall from ONE button she sold on ebay). Priscilla has recently returned from a visit to Panama and visits to San Blas Islands and the Kuna Indians where she had purchased some awesome molas which she we got to see. The most fun are the ones she keeps for herself – no amount of wheedling and whining can get her to part with those. This was undoubtedly the most incredible collection of molas I have ever seen!! She had seen they were much better than she had ever purchased before and she was right!! The workmanship defies description. My guess is that a many of these pieces easily took a month to complete. There are probably 15-20 stitches to the inch and every bit of the surface is covered with intricate reverse appliqué – the hallmark of these pieces of artwork. And the colors.....


Priscilla graciously let us look through the ones that she had for sale. Of course we couldn’t resist although there were so many that we would have loved to have that we left behind because we just couldn’t justify the additional expense. Marcia found some horses and I found a snail (in honor of my father who was an expert on land snails and I am sure crawled around in the jungles in Panama at some point – I think he actually got one of his cases of malaria and hepatitis there). I also found a small bunny that I bought in honor of my mother.



I love the fact that these are authentic molas that were worn on garments. Priscilla had many that still had parts of garments and zippers attached. They are worn like yokes on an apron (although not an apron) with similar if not matching ones on the back and the front of the garment. Notice the white pin head at the top of this one. If you double click you can see closer. That will give you an idea of how small those pin dot reverse applique circles are on this piece -- no, those are not french knots but a tiny hole is cut and the edge appliqued under to show the fabric beneath.


This is my snail with a man riding on top. Notice all the tiny zig zag reverse applique. Most of the pieces are "landscape" style and about 14 inches by 18 inches although they vary in size quite a bit.



This probably has the most intricate applique of all of the pieces. It is a very color octopus.
I loved how colorful this was with the bird portrayed on the pitcher.




Note to self: don’t wear your brightly colored flowered shirt when you will be sitting outside with the bees!!! They chased me all over the yard.