Saturday 3 March 2012

Mola applique technique

 One of the ladies who comes to Chertsey Museum's Fun With Fabric class brought in this panel that her mum had brought back from a holiday


 It's quite amazing - reverse applique in that ever decreasing shapes are cut away to make the coloured outlines, and also needle turn applique in that the raw edges of each layer have needle-turned under and stitched.  Additional detail is then hand quilted on.

I googled the technique (Mola), and found that these usually have between 3 and 7 layers of fabrics: nearly all have black layers, but the other layers are usually brightly coloured
 

I only went for 3 layers in my trial sample, and used fleece so I could avoid the needle turn bit,  and think I need to take a bit more care cutting away the shapes, but I quite enjoyed doing it, so will be getting a few more pieces of felt over the weekend, to have a  better go

Last weekend husband and I took both mothers (!) to Bletchely Park.  Partly to see the  history of the code (cypher) breaking during WWII, but also to see the quilt exhibition.

This fab map of the site was on show as were loads of other great quilts using the theme of secret codes.

I loved most of them, but this one particularly caught my attention as I have also used braille in a  quilt recently.  Some great interpretations of the theme.

5 comments:

  1. The Mola is great!
    Love that Bletchley quilt, Pings showed it on her review - she had one hanging too x

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  2. Ooh, that Mola looks cool, as does the Bletchley exhibit, I'd love to get a chance just to visit there some day

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  3. The Mola is lovely.

    We keep meaning to go up to Bletchly, John has just read 'Dilly' and a couple of other books on it. I didn't know there was a quilt show on too! Never mind, it looked great.

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  4. That map quilt is so cool. The top panel is so interesting to look at. Very tribal looking.

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  5. I have always loved South American mola-- esp the bright colors. I'm very impressed that you gave the technique a try!! The quilt show looks really interesting with the secret code theme. That's really neat that you used braille in a quilt!! You try so many different things!

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