The Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild is pleased to announce our 2024 workshop instructors and lecturers. Jane Clark, Vice President of Programs, surveyed our members to provide a variety of classes and venues.
From art quilts to traditional quilts, our programs include authors, fabric and pattern designers, an architect, and a podcast host!
Programs for January, September and November are via Zoom. March, May, and July programs will be in person.
Registration for GAAQG members begins November 1, 2023. Login to register for the 2024 workshops.
Please join us!
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
Melissa Gregoire
1414 S. Dowling
Westland, MI 48186
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
Melissa Gregoire
1414 S. Dowling
Westland, MI 48186
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.
Valerie S. Goodwin is a mixed media fiber artist and architect whose works of fine art are included in museum and private collections. Most of her work is inspired by a love of aerial views of landscapes and cities. Many of her quilts are based on maps.
She received degrees in architecture from Washington University and Yale University. Her award winning work has been widely published and exhibited. She also lectures and gives workshops nationally and internationally. For over 26 years, she taught architectural design at Florida A & M University.
Her book, Art Quilt Maps: Capture a Sense of Place with Fiber Collage-A Visual Guide is widely available.
Skill Level: Beginner to advanced
Techniques: Creative writing, painting, hand stitching, machine stitching (optional)
In this workshop you will create a series of small, simple and understated art quilt maps that capture the feeling of haiku, written by each student during the course of the class.
The instructor will guide the student through a structured yet nurturing series of steps that provides opportunities to grow and learn.
Although machine stitching in an option, hand stitching is a key part of the workshop.
Note: $10 Kit fee included in the workshop cost. Kits includes laser cut materials that will be used for your creation. All kits will be mailed to Jane Clark for pick up. Contact programs@gaaqg.com
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Techniques: Painting, hand stitching, machine stitching
Name a favorite place.
Is it in your city, your state, the USA or somewhere far away?
In this class, you can design a cartographic map of a favorite location such as your residence or birthplace. Discover the possibilities of creating a map from fabric, paint and thread!
Using a fun and simple series of painted and collaged, mixed- media techniques, you will create a mixed media fiber art map. Valerie will guide you through a series of steps that will provide opportunities to learn about design while giving you the freedom to experiment within a structured framework.
Important Note:
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Deborah Boschert is an artist, author and teacher. She creates art quilts with layers of fabric, paint and stitching. The personal symbols and details in her work reflect her experiences and feelings about places she’s lived and the things she’s done.
Her award-winning art quilts have been exhibited in quilt shows and art galleries throughout the United States and internationally. She has appeared on Quilting Arts TV and The Quilt Show. She is published in many books and magazines. Deborah is the author of Art Quilt Collage: A Creative Journey in Fabric, Paint and Stitch.
Skill Level: All
Techniques: Design, hand stitching, machine stitching
Create original art quilts by exploring a variety of ideas and techniques with layers of fabric, paint and stitch. Experiment with several methods of creating pattern and marks on fabric then begin composing intuitively.
Students will learn ways to find inspiration, incorporate personal symbols, and create details with stitching by hand and by machine. Plus, explore new creative possibilities with quick exercises, sketches, list-making and mind-mapping.
Optional Kit – Deborah’s fabric picks Kits must be ordered at least two full weeks before the date of your workshop.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Note special day and time!
Skill Level: All
Techniques: Design and creative process only.
Want to make quilts that are uniquely yours?
Deborah shares ideas about fully utilizing your head, heart and hands to create original work. Lots of tips for generating ideas, developing a body of work and exploring themes. Get inspired and leave with action items to get to work in your own studio.
Not a project or technique workshop — just notes and exercises with pen and paper, plus lots of interaction, discussion and ideas.
Supplies: pen, sketch book or paper for note-taking and a few markers or colored pencils.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Skill Level: All
Techniques: Design, composition, hand stitching, machine stitching
Design an original landscape collage using graphic shapes.
Learn composition tips and new ways to think about principles of design. Create detail and add texture with hand embroidery and machine stitching.
Plus, we’ll look at lots of examples of how other artists have created unique landscapes.
Optional Kit – Deborah’s fabric picks Kits must be ordered at least two full weeks before the date of your workshop.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
NESTLINGS by Robin is Koehler’s design business where she imagineers new ways to combine applique ideas with piecing to create her Whimsical-Traditional style. Her business was opened in 2004 and is a Quilt & Surface Pattern Design, Pattern Publishing, hand quilting services, & AQS Certified Quilt Appraisal business. Robin’s designs can be found in quilt shops and magazines throughout the world.
She has had multiple quilts juried into AQS Paducah and Mancuso Mid-Atlantic shows; but she truly loves to design and bring new, original, fun and easy patterns to products and quilters of all skill levels.
Skill Level: Confident beginner to advanced
Techniques: Paper piecing, machine stitching, quilt as you go
Ever felt like you have too many balls in the air to juggle? Let’s put some of them onto a quilt…you can even label them if you feel the need:) Bounce is a great intro to basic paper piecing with a modern layout and an opportunity to Quilt-as-you-go.
Paper piecing templates and hand outs included
Note: KIT $25 – Includes ALL papers for complete quilt, handouts including mini templates.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Techniques: Improvisational piecing, fusible applique, free motion quilting, beading
Try your hand at creating a unique flower!
Note: KIT $25 – Includes mounting assemblage of 8” x 10” gallery wrapped canvas, 8” x 10” mat board, 2 screw eyes, & framing wire.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Deb Strain is a fabric designer for Moda Fabrics.
Drawing and painting her fabric designs by hand, Deb has created over one-hundred collections since she began working with Moda. She loves working with different colors and patterns, the more intricate the better!
A life-long passion for art led Deb to teaching art before becoming a designer. Her artwork has been featured on many different products over the years – calendars, greeting cards, garden flags, books, framed prints and more. Recently, she and Scott proudly launched a line of notecards for sewing and quilting enthusiasts titled “Sew Noted”.
With traveling to see her children, creating new fabrics and collections, and other types of new art, Deb’s life is happily filled with color, creativity and lots of hugs!
She will be bringing 6-8 door prizes AND Selling her products! You will want to be present for this one!
Author, pattern designer, and national quilting instructor Beth Helfter has one rule about quilting – it’s supposed to be fun. With that in mind, along with her company motto of “Inspired Designs, Relaxed Attitude,” Beth brings visionary designs and techniques to her patterns and exuberance and encouragement to the classroom.
As a mostly scrappy designer, Beth prefers to dig into her stash to create designs and patterns that appeal to her senses of color and value, using as many different fabrics as possible. Keeping to just a few color families in each quilt palette is one of her best tricks to keeping scrappy quilts from getting too out of hand but allowing them to sing with tone and movement. Her lecture “Consistency in the Chaos” seeks to inspire quilters to think about scrap quilts and pull fabrics to make them shine without overwhelming the eye.
Her penchant for scraps and her need to use as many fabrics as possible in her quilts led her in 2017 to develop the Accordion Sewn HSTs™ method of creating half square triangles that don’t have a match and yet waste no fabric. Her book “Oompah! Jazz Up Your Scrap Quilts With Accordion Sewn HSTs™” was published in 2018, and “Another Round of Oompah” was published in 2020.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Techniques: Accordion Sewn Half Square Triangles, scrap piecing, precision machine piecing
Beth’s trademark technique helps you to quickly piece HSTs in no time. Up your skills and get addicted in the process.
Once you learn the technique and see how easy this is, you will want to adapt this into all your HST sewing.
This class is a great opportunity for using up scraps and playing with color.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Skill Level: Confident beginner to advanced
Techniques: Accordion Sewn Half Square Triangles, precision machine piecing
Learn Beth’s unique HST method while creating this stunning, scrappy version of a classic block.
Start with a runner and keep sewing blocks after class to make a throw or larger quilt.
You will be amazed how the blocks lay out almost like magic!
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Brandy Maslowski is a quiltmaker, textile artist and teacher known for her pursuit of more joy and less overwhelm in the classroom.
She loves exploring the texture, colour and boundless possibilities of fabric and stitch. She travels the world to educate, speak and ignite creativity with the tag line More Joy, Less Overwhelm. Her weekly Quilter on Fire Podcast has exploded on the quilting scene over the last 2 years and the feedback has overwhelmed her inbox with joy.
She is also a BERNINA Ambassador for Canada and founder of the SQUARE ONE 3 day Textile Art Bootcamp and the Confident & Creative Textile Artist Masterclass.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Techniques: Scrap piecing by machine, hand embellishing with beads, threads, etc.
Join Brandy for a step into textile art. Play with your favorite fabric scraps, embellishments, and beads to create a beautiful textile art piece mounted on wood panel. Dive into those favorite fabrics you never cut up! Pull out all your tucked away yarns, ribbons and more. This class gets into your treasures and has you playing with color.
Students finish this one-day workshop with an art piece complete and ready to hang on the wall
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced
Techniques: Improv piecing by machine, bag construction, hand stitching (optional)
In this workshop we make gorgeous improv hexagons in the morning to adorn the artful frontof our bag and then complete the project assembly in the afternoon.
For students who love to take their time with a project, they can focus their entire day on the bag front and finish the bag on their own at home with the full professional pattern. For students who want a quilt rather than a bag, Brandy will teach stitching the hexies in multiple sizes, stitched by machine or by hand so they can make it into a quilt.
Click on the date of the workshop in the box below for supply lists and details.
