Beautiful Folk Art

While taking pictures of some MOLAS, which I used to use for teaching ART, I made a collage, and thought it was worthy of sharing... The Mola is a fabric design in a technique called ,
"reverse applique". Molas are specific to the Cuna Indians who live on the San Blas Islands, off the coast of Panama. The girls and women wear them as decorations to their blouses and dresses. The man that I bought these from was a world traveler, who collected antiquites and brought them back to America to sell them... He actually sold items to the St. Louis Art Museum, also. He was very old, and was having an Estate Sale to empty his stock.....
He told me the story that the young girls were not allowed to wear the large traditional gold earrings until they turned 16 years old. They would save and collect molas from their dresses to exchange with the jewelers on their birthday for the coveted earrings. The jewelers would end up with stacks of these later to sell.
The designs are almost always made up of organic forms of birds, fish, plants, etc. and most often they are very symmetrically designed. The work is hand done, which is remarkable to me. I do quilts, but I piece them on the sewing machine. The collage of the molas makes a very dramatic Graphic Design, I think..... I wanted to share this (I guess it's the teacher in me) so that you could appreciate these "works of fabric art" from another place and time.......