Please review the registration and refund policy prior to registering for a class.
Questions? Contact workshopregistrar@gaaqg.com
Note: If your membership has lapsed please contact membership@gaaqg.com. Do not join as a new member.
Online registration requires one of the following payment types:
When paying by check, the online store assigns a pending status.
Mail your check, including your name and phone number, to:
GAAQG Treasurer
P.O. Box 131272
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48113-1272
Note: When paying by check for either an online or paper registration, your registration is pending until the check is both received and cleared. You will be notified when payment is completed and your registration is confirmed.
Mail-in registration requires a personal check and a completed paper registration form. Please mail both to the GAAQG Treasurer.
Mail your check, including your name and phone number, to:
GAAQG Treasurer
P.O. Box 131272
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48113-1272
Note: When paying by check for either an online or paper registration, your registration is pending until the check is both received and cleared. You will be notified when payment is completed and your registration is confirmed.
Before placing your order, please review the GAAQG Workshop Registration & Cancellation Policy.
When a workshop sells out, it will be removed from the online store’s list of available products. In this event, you can be added to a waiting list by emailing workshopregistrar@gaaqg.com.
Originally coming from a music background with degrees in piano performance, Rachel has had a long music teaching career. Her quilting has only become the focus of her work in the last 12 years.
Having spent her first 15 years in Japan as a child of missionaries, her work is greatly influenced by her childhood surroundings.
Her work has been featured in invitational and juried gallery shows and fine art/craft shows throughout the country. She primarily uses hand dyed or painted cottons, silks and nonwovens but also has a love of Asian fabrics and kimono silks, incorporating these ancient traditional fabrics into her compositions. Use of sheers, couching and fabric paints give a sense of depth and texture. Slightly curving lines portray gracefulness and circles are often present representing wholeness and creativity.
Rachel will share a lecture demonstrating the idea that quilts do not need to be complex to be compelling. She will share her thoughts on how to choose great fabrics and simple designs to create amazing quilts. She will show some work from artists who have inspired her and also speak about how her background has informed her work.
Instructor: Rachel Derstine, via Zoom
Friday, January 16, 2026 9am-4pm
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Workshop Type: Innovative/Design Techniques/Fused Applique
Class Preparation:
A full day workshop creating a quilt based on an architecture photo.
Do you have a favorite building you’d like to recreate? We will be doing fused applique.
We will work on how to create proper perspective and how to infuse some vibrant color into your buildings
A PDF Supply list will be made available to you before class.
Instructor: Rachel Derstine, via Zoom
Saturday, January 17, 2026 2pm-5pm
$37.50 for members, $45 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovative/Art Quilting/Design Techniques
Class Preparation:
Half day workshop on easy mini landscape quilting using fused applique techniques. Make either an 8 x 10” or 5 x 7” quilt. Some sample landscape background designs will be provided.
Learn the techniques Rachel Derstine likes to use to create fantasy landscape quilts full of color and depth. Create a background by piecing the sky, mountains and water then use it as a canvas on which to add trees, mountains, foliage and moon or sun.
Students will finish or nearly finish the quilt top during the class. Quilting and facing will be demonstrated and discussed. Optional: zig-zag edge if you plan to mat and frame.
Instructor: Rachel Derstine, via Zoom
Sunday, January 18 and January 25, 2026
9am-noon
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovate/Art Quilting/Design Techniques
Class Preparation: Supply list
We will do curved piecing of coordinated hand dyed and commercial fabrics for the background. Easy quilting designs will be introduced.
Organza circles will be stitched to the surface with single or double needle applique. Yarns will be couched to the surface for movement and definition.
PDF supply list will be provided prior to class. Optional demo of screen printing with paint on the surface of the quilt will be offered.
This is a Zoom, two-day class of 3 hours each, with a week between sessions.
After a varied career in the design world, Jane began to quilt in 1980. She found that these “soft paintings” satisfied the draftsman, craftsman and artist in her. She is now a dedicated (some say “obsessed”) quilt artist and fabric designer.
Her art quilts have been shown in many national and international exhibits, including Quilt National 1989 through 2005 and Contemporary American Quilts, the first major exhibit of American art quilts in England. Her quilt “Willow” was named as One of the One Hundred Best American Quilts of the Century. Jane is also the author of “The Quilted Garden”. The book includes twenty years of her work and exercises for making nature-inspired quilts.
She has 26 selected awards and honors, 23 selected bibliographies, 3 solo shows, 11 group exhibits and appeared on television 7 times.
Jane’s love for historic decorative arts can be seen in all facets of her work, Her designs are oversized and colorful and have been coined as “William Morris on anti-depressants”. They are created for quilts, wearables and home decorating. Her latest book, Patchwork Sassman Style, beautifully illustrates her fabric “in action”.
This visual lecture is about accomplishing your work in spite of obstacles – family life, space limitations, etc. It is a pep talk and slide show which covers Jane’s inspirations and her obstacles. She encourages people to do “what you have to do” by using herself and other artists as examples.
Instructor: Jane Sassaman, in person
Thursday and Friday
March 19 and 20, 2026 9am-4pm
$200 for members, $230 for nonmembers
Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced
Workshop Type: Innovative/Design Techniques
Class Preparation:
Nature is an endless source of inspiration. In this workshop, we will examine a wide variety of artists interpretations of nature before beginning to manipulate natural forms ourselves.
Through a series of exercises, we will experiment with abstraction and exaggeration to capture the essence and energy of your favorite flora and achieve dramatic visual effects. We will then translate these ideas into fabric in a two-day workshop.
Instructor: Jane Sassaman, in person
Sunday, March 22, 2026 9am-4pm
$100 for members, $115 for nonmembers
Skill Level: Beginner to advanced
Workshop Type: Innovative/Art Quilting/Design Technique – Machine Applique – Circles
Class Preparation:
Suns and Moons is a machine appliqué workshop based on the circle motif.
Using Jane’s appliqué techniques and experimenting with our decorative stitches, we will begin by making a series of colorful fabric discs which will then be arranged into a dramatic and contemporary composition.
Kevin is passionate about hand dyeing and patterning fabrics with surface design techniques and composing quilts with his one-of-a-kind cloth. His works have been exhibited at many regional and national shows.
Quilts from his “Swaddling to Shroud” collaborative series with artist Eleanor McCain have been included in the Quilt National ‘13 exhibition and Quilt Visions Biennial 2014. He was awarded Best in Show in Quilts, Art Quilts 2021 at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY, and the Award of Excellence in 2023 Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie at the Floyd County Carnegie Library Cultural Arts Center in New Albany, IN. Kevin teaches and lectures nationally.
Kevin Womack’s work explores the expressive potential of textiles to hold emotion, memory, and narrative. Through abstraction he draws on personal experiences, using moments of joy, uncertainty, loss, and transformation to create layered compositions that evoke both intimacy and complexity.
Through digitally layered motifs, his current work builds an evolving visual vocabulary that becomes increasingly intricate and nuanced. The resulting compositions are structured to suggest narrative while leaving space for interpretation. He invites viewers to find reflections of their own histories within his, honoring the quiet power of cloth to hold what words cannot.
Join Kevin on a tour of his colorful quilting journey as he shares over 75 examples spanning more than 38 years. Starting from his humble beginnings in 1986 and traveling through precision piecing of traditional quilts, he soon developed a love for hand dyeing and patterning his own fabrics. Discover the story as he leads you down his personal path to becoming the artist that he is today.
Instructor: Kevin Womack, in person
2 Day Workshop
Friday and Sunday, May 15 & May 17
9am-4pm
$200 for members, $230 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovative/Art Design/Design Techniques
Class Preparation:
Marks are more than lines on a surface—they’re a reflection of your energy, emotion, and personal story. In this 2-day class, you’ll explore the expressive power of mark-making to build a visual vocabulary that’s uniquely yours.
On Day One, you’ll dive into intuitive mark-making using ink, markers, and paint, experimenting with various tools and prompts to uncover the gestures that resonate with you.
Day Two shifts to hand stitching, where you’ll explore thread and stitch as marks, adding texture, rhythm, and meaning through the needle.
Leave class with a personalized set of marks, an expanded visual vocabulary, and multiple creative strategies for applying them in your own work—whether through quilting, collage, embroidery, digital design, or mixed media.
Instructor: Kevin Womack, in person
Saturday, May 16, 2026 1pm-4pm
$50 for members, $65 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Class Preparation:
Optional kit – $10
There are countless ways to quilt a contemporary quilt, and the quilting itself can transform your work. While the pattern often sets the stage, the color of your thread and the density of your stitching can dramatically change the final effect.
In this half-day class, you’ll explore essential color concepts through free motion quilting exercises and begin to discover how color theory can bring your designs to life. Through hands-on practice, you’ll see how thread color and stitch density combine to create dynamic surfaces and surprising results—revealing that thread color isn’t just a finishing touch but an expressive element of subtle power to add to your artistic arsenal.
Brandy Maslowski is a quiltmaker and artist who travels extensively as a teacher, speaker and NACQJ certified quilt judge. She is author of children’s picture book Kristy’s Quilt, the Consulting Editor of Quilting Arts Magazine, and Cohost of Quilting Arts TV. She is the founder and host of the Quilter on Fire Podcast and can be found everywhere online as the Quilter on Fire.
Join Brandy Maslowski as she dives into the role of a judge, how the educational component contributes to a successful show, common misconceptions about judging, what’s in a critique and so much more. She’ll answer your pressing questions and have you inspired to enter this year’s show.
Debbie Grifka is a textile artist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Having fallen in love with fabric as a child, she has expressed that love as a garment maker, a quilter, and now as a textile artist.
By the example of her parents – and the stories told of extended family on the other side of the world -Debbie learned that she came from a long line of practical makers who sewed, knitted, or built the things they wanted and needed. That “can do”attitude helped shape the sewist, quilter and artist she has become.
Debbie’s current series of art quilts continues her longtime interest in line with occasional detours to explore shape and text. She uses limited color palettes and natural fibers such as cotton and linen as well as both hand and machine stitching.
Debbie’s work has been published in many books andmagazines. She has also exhibited her works nationally and internationally. She can be found online at
debbiegrifka.com, Instagram (@debbiegrifka), and Facebook (Debbie Dunn
Grifka).
Mary Bajcz has been making quilts since 1976, but really found her voice in 2000 when she developed free-cut-piecing, an improvisational technique. She stacks up fabric and then “draws” simple shapes into the stack with a rotary cutter. Then the pieces are mixed and matched and sewn back together. She loves the serendipity in this process.
Her quilts have been exhibited nationally and she has taught quilt making for many years. To learn more visit her YouTube channel: ScraphappinessStudio and Facebook page.
Kathryn Schmidt is an author and artist who has been working with textiles for over 50 years. She delights in sharing her love of the non-traditional, and mixed-media techniques are her favorite area of exploration. She is excited by the infinite possibilities of textile exploration.
The author of Rule Breaking Quilts, Kathy has taught and exhibited in various locations over her long career and continues to create in her retirement.
Read her blog and see her work at Quirks Ltd.
Instructor: Mary Bajcz – In person
Friday, September 18, 2026 9am-4pm
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Kit Fee: $10
Although many patterns these days use lovely quilting cottons, decorator fabrics are more durable and if they have enough body, there’s no need for interfacing which simplifies things a lot.
Although it’s easy to make a bag from a solid piece of fabric, (which we’ll do in class), Mary takes pleasure in making patchwork from smaller scraps. We all love patchwork! Mary will show simple ways to box a bottom, sew handles, add lining and zippers and other hints she’s learned over the years.
Have you got decorator fabrics scraps hiding in your stash???
Instructor: Kathy Schmidt – In person
Saturday, September 19, 2026 1pm-4pm
$37.50 for members, $45 for nonmembers
Skill Level:
Kit Fee: $8
Add sparkle to your quilts with a few beads—or a lot! Adding beads to a quilted project is very straightforward and we will show you how to do it in the absolutely easiest way.
You will learn all you need to get started in just one lesson and your shiny quilt dreams will become a reality.
Instructor: Mary Bajcz and Kathy Schmidt – In person
Sunday, September 20, 2026 9pm-4pm
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Be bold! Be brave!
If you are ready to take a step away from traditional quilting, free form piecing will give you total freedom from patterns.
Put down your ruler and approach your fabric armed only with a rotary cutter and a sense of adventure. Try a simple idea with countless possibilities: stack up pieces of fabric, slash through the stacks, rearrange the pieces and sew them back together into units that can be combined into unique pieces.
Think of this as drawing with your rotary cutter, but you don’t have to know how to draw. Show off your personality and your curves (well, actually your curved piecing) while creating a one-of-a-kind wall hanging.
Learn how the experts create improv designs, from easy stack and slice to curvy curves. Experiment with curvy shapes, pointy points, extreme fabric choices, and fear none of them.
Tap into your creative side and just play with the fabrics you love. The fun is in the process, where there are no mistakes, just alternate design decisions. No need for precision piecing—if a piece doesn’t fit, you just trim it smaller or add a hunk of fabric to make it bigger! This will be a fun, relaxed, and easy workshop and every quilt is unique.
Born in Chile, educated as an industrial civil engineer, now living in Brazil, Carolina Oneto will be our November instructor.
In Buenos Aires, she had the incredible opportunity of learning patchwork with Teresita Leal and Cecilia Koppman, known Argentinian quilters.
Every February Carolina travels to the Festival of Moderan Quilting (Quiltcon) in the United States where she attends workshops and lectures with known international quilters. This allows her to constantly create new ideas and techniques, to see and be able to take quilting towards a more modern and actual place. She has studied Color Interaction with Professor and artist Eduardo Vilches in the Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile.
Her quilts have been exhibited in many Quilt Festivals around the world, such as Quilt Week (Paducah, Lancaster, Des Moines, Daytona Beach, Grand Rapids, Virginia Beach), Quiltcon, Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, European Carrefour do Patchwork, Fiberart International, Festival do Patchwork Gramado and Floripa Quilt Festival (both in Brazil). Additionally, my work has been featured at art centers and galleries in Europe, USA and Chile.
Color is an important element in art, understanding how to use it it can be a strong tool to create contrast, balance, focal point and many other important principles when it is time to compose your own work.
Instructor: Carolina Oneto via Zoom
Friday, November 20, 2026 9am-4pm
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovative/Design Technique
Class Preparation:
In this workshop Carolina Oneta will teach her process to create a “Watercolor Quilt”. We will learn about Color Theory, the chromatic circle and the 3 variables of color.
Carolina will guide you throughout the process of choosing fabrics, to create a beautiful transition with colors (like when we paint with watercolors!) She will teach you the process, step by step, to create a “watercolor quilt”.
You can be sure that this complete course will provide you with new techniques and color theory knowledge that will allow you to feel confident designing, cutting and sewing in an improvisational way, but with some rules to create beautiful movement in your quilts.
Necessary materials: Sewing machine that makes a straight stitch, walking foot, quarter-inch foot, fabrics, thread, rotary cutter, ruler, iron, paper, masking tape, fabric marker.
Instructor: Carolina Oneto via Zoom
Saturday, November 21, 2026 1pm-5pm
$50 for members, $60 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovative/Design Techniques
Class Preparation:
In this workshop the attendees will make a mini quilt top, where we will design it from scratch. Then we will talk about Color Theory and how we can create a Transparency effect with color and fabrics.
Carolina Oneto will teach you how to cut fabrics with complex shapes and to join these curved shapes by machine.
Necessary materials:Sewing machine that makes a straight stitch, walking foot, quarter-inch foot, fabrics, thread, rotary cutter, ruler, iron, paper, masking tape, fabric marker.
Instructor: Carolina Oneto via Zoom
Sunday, November 22, 2026 9am-4pm
$75 for members, $90 for nonmembers
Skill Level: All levels
Workshop Type: Innovative/Design Techniques
Class Preparation:
In this workshop the attendees will design and make a mini quilt top (18” x 22”) learning how to draw, cut and sew curves.
During the class we will explore different designs, and how to use value and hue to create interesting compositions.
The attendees will learn how to cut fabrics with complex shapes and how to sew these curved shapes by machine.
Necessary materials: Sewing machine that makes a straight stitch, walking foot, quarter-inch foot, fabrics, thread, rotary cutter, ruler, iron, paper, masking tape, fabric marker.
