Make the Mimosa Out of Your Day

This idea popped into my head on a flight from NY to FL. I had just visited my parents, and spending time with my very creative mother got me all fired up to make more artwork, so my brain was on a roll while I was trapped in my airplane seat.

We had been talking about creative lettering on bar signs, and I wanted to try my hand at making a fabric picture styled like an artsy sign. I wasn't too enthusiastic about cutting letters by hand, however, so this idea got pushed aside for a while until I discovered DIY cutting machines.

Once I'd purchased a Cricut of my own, however, I wanted to put the machine through its paces and really test out how detailed it could cut. This picture was the perfect opportunity, so I fleshed out my idea, made a template, and went to town.

I've included a picture of the template I created in Illustrator along with the finished fabric piece and a couple of detail photos.

Transformation

As the story above says, Make the Mimosa Out of Your Day was designed to push the limits of what my Cricut was capable of cutting. How thin could the fabric get without fraying or breaking? How close together could pieces be arranged and still cut correctly? Was it possible to cut text? In addition, I started experimenting with different methods of treating the fabric against fraying, a series of trial and error tests that would continue for the next year.

Mimosa was also the first design which was made with no hand tracing. All the pieces were uploaded to the Cricut software as digital files, another milestone on my road to complete digital design.

It was around this time that my parents and I went to our very first quilt show in Gainesville, FL. Mom and Dad are two of my biggest supporters, and they were just as interested as I was to know more about quilting.

It was a small, local show, with maybe 50 quilts on display total and less than 10 art quilts. But, most importantly for me, each quilt was accompanied by a printed sheet that had the artist name, artist statement, and a list of techniques used in that quilt. It was at this show that I realized the technique I'd been using to make my fabric pictures had a name: raw-edge, fused appliqué.