If you’ve spent enough time driving around Massachusetts, you’ve probably seen road signs that say a neighborhood is “Thickly Settled.” It’s an exclusively New England expression, and though the signs have a legal meaning, they state it in an oddly nonconfrontational way. They seem to insinuate the law rather than declare it, in the form of a simple, friendly reminder to slow down.

For Somerville-based illustrator and folk artist Monique Aimee, the words on these signs served as inspiration for and title of her upcoming exhibit. “Thickly Settled” will open at the Alias Gallery in Orleans on May 18. Like the signs, she says, her work aims to help viewers slow down and appreciate their surroundings.

Aimee started drawing at an early age and studied with a professional illustrator in middle school. When it came time to choose a college, she had a debate with her parents — she wanted to pursue fine arts; they wanted her to go into design. Illustration, she says, seemed like a good middle ground.

With her illustration degree from Lesley University, she landed a job as a sign painter at Whole Foods, which sometimes gave her the chance to design big chalkboard pieces. She would post these on social media, and some local restaurants and cafés took notice and hired her.

She began to develop a style: warm pastels, simple figures, high contrast, and distorted perspective. Her devotion to warm colors was so complete for a while that she all but refused to use blue in her work. “I didn’t have a thing against blue specifically,” she says. “I just loved the warm colors so much. But blue and I are on good terms now.”

Aimee has designed book covers for romance novels, advertising campaigns for Sephora and Chobani, and a series of pieces for Netflix to promote season 4 of Stranger Things. She calls that “the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Aimee says that working with restrictions fuels her creativity. She views each new project as a puzzle. A client’s commission requires solving various problems to fulfill the assignment’s requirements while ensuring that the piece is distinctly her own. It’s the lack of restrictions, she adds, that makes designing pieces for gallery shows challenging. “I have to actually be a little bit more disciplined” in order to get her personal art done.

Aimee’s art tends to focus on comforting familiar imagery: cups of coffee, quaint towns, bowls of fruit. The inspiration for these works comes from moments of peace. “I want my work to be seen as calming, comforting, and also joyful,” she says.

All of the works in “Thickly Settled” are fiber art pieces that are tied thematically to the idea of slowness. Fabric art is culturally tied to comfort and coziness — curling up in bed or wearing a warm sweater on a cold day. She hopes people looking at her work experience the same feeling they get “enjoying a coffee or just having a slow morning,” she says.

The pieces are made with a more than 100-year-old chain stitch sewing machine — “it’s pretty industrial,” she says, but high quality — and a rug tufting gun. The rest of her work is mostly digital, and using this equipment is strenuous. She says she enjoys the physical feeling of a hard day’s work, even if it leaves her arm sore by the end of the day. “It’s nice to not be staring at a screen all the time,” she says.

Her moments of inspiration have often come when she is abroad. Aimee lived for over a year in Melbourne, Australia, where she completed a typography workshop before working as a freelance illustrator; she has also traveled extensively in Japan. Being overseas, she says, gives her fresh ideas for how to approach the familiar subjects that fill her work. “Once I come home, I feel like I have fresh eyes for my own environment,” she says.

In Vest, a woman dressed in otherwise muted colors dons a bright orange vest with a starred print. She stands with one hand on her hip and the other pointed to the right, and the pattern on the vest recalls a quilt. The vest looks soft and textured, almost begging to be touched.

From afar, Aimee’s pieces look like solid blocks of color, but up close, details emerge. A bright sun becomes a tightly wrapped series of orange circles, while the side of a house might be made of brown waves. There’s a gentle swirling quality to the pieces that lends Aimee’s work a natural warmth.

This is especially noticeable in Town 2, depicting a sunny day in a dense town. The houses, trees, and church are all made of different colors of thread, and they seem to pile on top of one another, though not in an unsettling way. It recalls the feeling of overlooking a suburban town from atop a cliff, with the sun beaming down and a city in the distance. “Thickly settled” is perfectly apt here.

As an illustrator, Aimee says, it’s easy to fall into a competitive, client-driven mindset. “It’s been really nice to switch gears and think, ‘No, I’m making it for myself,’ ” she says.

Thickly Settled

The event: An exhibition of fiber art by Monique Aimee
The time: On view May 18 to June 2; opening reception Saturday, May 18, 3-6 p.m.
The place: Alias Gallery, 64 Main St., Orleans
The cost: Free