Christmas 2021 was the first Christmas without my Mom - she passed away 5 March 2021 - so the holidays were different from usual. Everyone adjusts to changes differently, so I found a way to express my attempt at adjusting. "I'm Fine. Everything is fine" seemed to just about describe how I was doing over this past Christmas...for the most part. Yeah. OK...
The design I chose was from Creative Fabrica. It's called "I'm fine, Everything is Fine Tangled".
The design has a tangled mess of Christmas lights and the saying along the top and bottom.
I decided to slightly modify the words of the design, so after I imported it into Silhouette Studio, I deleted the words and selected the font "Mirogate" from Creative Fabrica as the font for the words. I chose Mirogate because I wanted a tall and narrow font that would only take up one line for the text. This allowed me to maximize the width of the tangled lights design to fit within the 12" x 12" material size.
I sent the design to my Cameo4. I used Black HTV for the wiring line and lettering. Since it's HTV, I mirrored the whole design before sending.
The reversed design may look funny, but HTV has to be cut reversed because it's applied to the material with the backing facing up (backwards to regular vinyl).
My cameo working on the complex wiring lines of the design.
Weeding was a minor challenge - I had to look carefully at the design on screen to make sure that I was removing the correct sections of black material. I really like using the dental pick because it can grab the HTV and lift up the pieces with minimal effort.
Weeded design. Well, at least the black part. I used my Cricut Easy Press 2 to press the HTV onto my t-shirt.
Next, I cut each of the bulb colors.
After cutting, I realized I could have rearranged the bulbs to all be aligned in a little line. However, by cutting them out on HTV in their respective locations, I was able to easily determine where each bulb belonged. When I weeded the HTV, I carefully cut it so that I created the most direct path to the next bulb. This kept the bulbs aligned to their destinations and reduced the amount of HTV wasted in each of the colors. I have since used many of the remaining odd shaped bits in other projects.
There were five colors of lights to be placed properly. I'm glad I decided to have the lights cut in their locations. Even though that may have "wasted" HTV, it certainly made it easier to determine which bulbs were to be which colors.
The final shirt, which I wore on most of Christmas Day except for Christmas Mass (because I wore a dress for Mass because a t-shirt was too sloppy for Church). I think it worked out fine, and I'll probably wear it again next holiday season just because.
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