A Quilt Story: PM Lip Pop

I've been meaning to write up the stories behind of some of my favorite quilts. So often my quilt pictures only get published to Instagram and the story behind them gets lost or I forget to share what inspired me in the first place. Since this is one of my very favorite quilts and hasn't already been featured, I thought I start with my PM Lip Pop mini.

PM Lip Pop by Raeann McIntosh
January 2015

This quilt was created for round two of the Schnitzel and Boo mini quilt swap hosted by Kristi over at Schnitzel and Boo. My partner was Raquel, @raquelsews. She's a bad ass LA fashion photographer and designer. She screen prints her photos onto fabric and creates home decor and fashion accessories for her brand Olivo

 I knew I was going to have to bring my A game to create something that represented her aesthetic and would fit into her fashionable lifestyle. I love pop art and really felt like that was the right direction for this project. After spending hours drawing doodles and Pinterest-ing ideas I stumbled upon the work of Patrice Murciano. Patrice is a visual artist from the south of France. His work is incredibly colorful and graphic and his style of portraiture is striking. Seriously, his Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorites; you should definitely go check it out. I found his work to be incredibly inspiring. 

Just a Kiss by Patrice Murciano

As soon as I saw Just a Kiss I knew I wanted to try to recreate it in fabric. I created a low-volume, improve pieced base. I then dove into my scrap bag and pulled out various shades and patterns of pink, purple, orange and splashes of black, white, and yellow. I free form cut pieces and layered them on top of the base until I was happy with the basic layout. 

Applique pieces laid out on improv base

Once I was happy with the results of my fabric architecture, I laid down the thread work. I used pink, purple, white, yellow, orange, and back thread to secure the applique pieces and give definition to the design. I then added random straight line quilting to the base to finish out the piece. 

close up of the thread work

 

My version isn't as graphic and didn't achieve the depth of the original inspiration piece. The lips aren't as full and some of the sense of movement has been lost in translation. Regardless, I'm still crazy pleased with the result. I feel like it's a great quilty interpretation of a ridiculously cool art piece and showcases all of the things I love about quilting. I keep thinking about revisiting this design and creating a large, usable quilt.