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My husband was born and raised in the Panama Canal Zone and had occasion to visit the San Blas islands where the native people make molas. They are very careful to preserve their traditions and culture. They make some molas for trade these days, but traditionally they were part of the women's clothing. I suspect they might have vegetable dyes that might not be stable in a quilt, and having one within a larger piece might put undue strain on the stitches. Every one I've seen was done entirely by hand, and the colors are always intense and varied. We have some in frames and would not want to handle them a lot. However they seem to hold up well when worn and washed by the people who make them. You can find dozens of them on eBay, and some may be from non-authentic sources. There's a wide variety of subject matter and quality.

For unknown reasons these people have an unusually high incidence of albinism. Usually the men of the tribe would be employed in fishing, but an albino can not safely work in the sun. The solution has been to keep albino boys at home and teach them needle arts along with the girls. There is no stigma resulting from this. In fact the albinos have a special status in their society.

You can find more pictures and information here: http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/docs...ssactmolas.pdf and of course, in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuna_people Interesting that the article is called "Kuna People", but the first paragraph says that the preferred spelling now is "Guna".