Quilting Without Rules: A Beginner's Guide to Improv
Thursdays, August 27, September 3, 10, and 17, 1:30–4 p.m.
Location: High Museum of Art, Purple Workshop, Greene Family Education Center
Registration Required
Not a member? Join today!
The registration fee includes all materials, weekly access to world-class art on view in the museum’s galleries and special exhibitions, hours of expert instruction, and additional access to a Friday afternoon open studio during the run of the class.
The registration fee includes all materials, weekly access to world-class art on view in the museum’s galleries and special exhibitions, hours of expert instruction, and additional access to a Friday afternoon open studio during the run of the class.
New to using a sewing machine? Hesitant to cut into fabric without a pattern? This is the class for you!
Learn the mechanics of piecing while working entirely by instinct: no measuring twice, no pattern to follow, no “right” way to arrange a block. Use fabric scraps to build your own quilt top from scratch, cut by cut and decision by decision, all while getting comfortable with the sewing machine and learning basic terminology along the way. A visit to the museum’s collection offers a chance to see how quilters before you worked without rulebooks too.
- Week 1: Get oriented with the machine and learn the basic vocabulary of piecing: seam allowance, pressing, and squaring up. Start cutting into your fabric scraps without a plan, and begin assembling your first blocks, letting touch and instinct lead (rather than a finished picture you might be imagining). Visit the galleries to study how improvisation appears in quilts across eras.
- Week 2: Keep building your quilt top, block by block, while getting more comfortable with the machine. Talk through what makes a composition feel balanced or lively: contrast, repetition, scale, and start noticing what you’re drawn to as you work, rather than what you think you should be making.
- Week 3: Shift into refining what you have built: rearranging, adding, or cutting sections apart to strengthen the overall composition. Finish machine piecing and prepare your quilt top for hand stitching.
- Week 4: Learn the basics of hand stitching, and finish your piece with a layer of texture and detail. We’ll pin our finished quilt tops to the wall and discuss how the same starting point led everyone somewhere to different.
This is an introductory-level Studio Class; it is designed to accommodate all levels of skill and talent. If you have never taken an art making class before, this is a great place to start. You will learn new skills that you can use in your artistic practice.
Please note that in the event of a session being canceled, September 24 is reserved as a makeup date.
About Studio Classes
Expand your art-making skills through guided, step-by-step instruction with expert instructor. Over multiple weeks, you will learn alongside other creative adults and delve deeply into the artistic process, explore new techniques, and build your practice.
The registration fee includes all materials, weekly access to world-class art in the museum’s galleries, hours of expert instruction, and access to a Friday afternoon Open Studio during the run of the class.
About your Instructor
Loi Laing (she/her) is a visual artist and educator working in textiles, natural dyes, and earth pigments. Her studio practice draws on locally sourced, ecologically responsible materials and moves between ancient dye traditions and contemporary methods, including plant-based color, hand-stitching, quilting, shibori, sashiko, and slow, process-driven making. In her workshops, she guides participants through hands-on encounters, using material process as a way into deeper creative and reflective engagement. She also brings a background in law to her work with artists, writing and speaking about intellectual property and the practical realities of protecting creative work. Her writing appears in This Long Thread: Women of Color on Craft, Community, and Connection (2021) by Jen Hewett, and in Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life’s Hard Questions (2011) by Lori Deschene.
