Bluework: Combine Embroidery and Cyanotype

Do you want to create original textile pieces full of color? If you love the color blue and want to learn how to combine printing and embroidery, this is the course for you. Discover these creative techniques alongside visual artist Sol Kesseler, better known as Bugambilo. Her work has appeared in specialized magazines, private collections, and national as well as international exhibitions.

Bugambilo teaches you to create a bluework piece combining eight elegant stitches with cyanotype: an old printing method that allows you to print on fabric in a range of incredible blue tones. If you’d like to explore other types of embroidery, Bugambilo demonstrates mixed-technique portrait illustration in her first course Creation of Embroidered Portraits.

Start by getting to know more about your teacher Sol Kesseler and her studio Bugambilo, where she embroiders her stunning texture-filled artworks. She also shares some of her pieces as well as her main influences.

Take a brief look at the materials you need for the course before hearing Bugambilo talk about the conceptualization of the term “bluework” and cyanotype technique.

To achieve your incredible images and prints, you first need to prepare the surface of the fabric to make it sensitive to UV light. Do a control test to determine how long you should expose your cyanotypes for and then move on to producing your negatives and photograms.

Once your negative is ready and your fabric primed, it’s time to develop your cyanotype! Next, see how to choose thread colors that work in harmony with the blues.