Technique Classes

Teaching technique classes is my favorite kind of teaching because students gain skills to enhance their quilts, and I hope, become inspired to create their own designs or to adapt other people's designs. These classes will add to your skill toolbox and push you in new directions.

New in 2027!

Nature's Design

6-hour class, best as two 3-hour sessions

Nature perfects design, and you can learn a lot from what works in the natural world and use it to enhance your quilt designs. Learn how to use color, shape, line, texture, pattern, balance, focal point, negative space, and more in this six-hour class. You’ll gain insight into where to find inspiration in our environment, and how to see realistic and abstract designs in trees, creeks, animals, flowers, rocks, even the essence of life — DNA. Nature's design supports life from the microscopic to the universal and everything in between, and it can bring life to your quilts. You'll learn how to see — really see — what's around you. There will be hands-on exercises, suggestions for home-play activities to do between class sessions, and direction toward creating your own unique design for a quilt.

Warp Speed

6-hour class, can be two 3-hour sessions

Do you love traditional quit blocks but you're not a traditional quilter? This class is for you. You'll begin by selecting a traditional block to "warp." You'll change design proportions and nest, twist, turn, flop and reverse blocks, and more. You'll design a quilt using your warped block.

Student Favorite!

Demystifying Design for Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP)

6-hour class, can be two 3-hour sessions

This is my favorite class to teach in part because I don’t know anyone else who teaches quite what I offer. You’ll learn to create foundations for everything from traditional blocks to pictorial quilts. We’ll start with designing foundations for simple blocks then move to more complex blocks. In the process, you’ll discover when foundation piecing is the best piecing process for you. You’ll design a block, and you’ll design a small pictorial quilt working from a photograph.

While there won't be quilt police in the classroom, you will meet the Paper Police© who will become your new BFFs on your journey to design for FPP. Their goal is your success.

You'll create patterns for a block that is uniquely yours and a pattern for a pictorial quilt. You’ll be creating quilts with extreme angles, sharp points, precision piecing, easy cutting, one-of-a-kind images, and more before you know it.

Claim Your Inner Designer!

Finding Your Design Voice

18 hours in six 3-hour sessions, plus an optional critique session

If you’re ready to design your own quilts but aren’t sure where to start, this class will introduce you to the basics of design — balance, unity, variety, line, shape, value, color, pattern, texture, and more — through in-class activities and home-play projects between sessions. You’ll learn what appeals to you toward developing your design style. In this class, you will:

Learn concepts of design you can use to design quilts and to adapt other people’s designs;
Be stretched to try new ideas, some that may push you to a new place, and some that will affirm your ability as a designer;
Learn practices of designers toward helping you develop your own work habits; and
Become confident that you can design quilts unique to you.

The class is six three-hour classes spread over six months, allowing time between classes to use what you learn, plus a final critique session for those who are interested. One student said this class is Design 101, Design 102, and then some. Others have said this class has taken their quilting to a whole new level they didn't know they could reach.

Finding Your Color Sense

Variable lengths from a half day to 12 hours in two six-hour or four 3-hour sessions

Each of us has an innate color sense though not all of us are in touch with it. My approach to teaching color for quilters is to help you find your color sense through a series of activities the culminate in you creating a fabric color wheel to hang in your sewing space. This class has been enjoyed by those terrified of color, those confident with color and those somewhere in-between. You’ll learn to find color palettes in photos and your surroundings, how to create dimension with color, and color theory in ways that won’t cause your eyes to glaze over.

Circle of Friends

6-hour class or two 3-hour sessions

I designed “Circle of Friends” as a way of teaching Cheryl Phillips’ surprisingly simple technique for insetting circles using her Cut-a-Round tool. You’ll master insetting circles into blocks and circles into circles using just eight pins per circle no matter the size. You’ll make the first block for this quilt in a few hours, then you’ll perfect the technique, so by the end of the class, you’ll have multiple blocks done — perhaps enough for a table runner. You’ll know how to continue making blocks for as large a quilt as you want.

Circling Charley:

Quick & Easy Inset Circle

6-hour class

Learn to inset circles into blocks and circles while making a table or bed runner. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to do. Using a technique developed by Cheryl Phillips that requires minimal pinning — eight pins per circle no matter its size — you’ll make the first block for this quilt in a few hours. Then you’ll perfect the technique so by the end of the class, you’ll likely have made two or more blocks, and you’ll know how to continue making blocks for as large a quilt as you want.