In this immersive workshop with renowned textile artist Luke Haynes, students will explore quilting as a dynamic storytelling medium. The week begins with a series of hands-on demonstrations and guided exercises that cover foundational and advanced techniques ranging from piecing and composition to surface treatment and conceptual framing.
As the week progresses, students are invited to move into more self-directed work, developing their own projects with Luke offering individualized feedback, gentle nudges, and constructive critique. This is a class about making—about trying, failing, reworking, and arriving. Students are encouraged to bring their full creative selves to the process and to use quilting as a way to investigate personal narratives, visual rhythm, and material experimentation.
Whether you’re developing a new body of work or refining your practice, this class is designed to deepen both your technical fluency and your artistic voice. All experience levels are welcome, though some comfort with a sewing machine is helpful.
About Luke Haynes
Luke Haynes is an internationally acclaimed textile artist who has redefined quilting as a contemporary fine art form. Raised in poverty across the American South and diagnosed as autistic, Haynes turned to creative problem-solving as a way to build comfort, structure, and identity in a world that often felt unpredictable. Quilting became his language of survival—first as a self-taught teenager, and later as a lifelong practice of transformation.
He earned a full scholarship to study architecture at The Cooper Union in New York City, where he deepened his understanding of spatial design, material systems, and the built environment. Although he ultimately returned to textiles as his primary medium, the influence of architecture remains central to his practice—most notably in his large-scale quilted structures and public art installations. Haynes has created quilted houses, suspended fabric environments, and shade-giving architectural textiles for cities including Los Angeles, Seattle, and Phoenix. His most recent public work, SOMBRA: The Celebration of Shade, was commissioned through a major city art grant and serves as a gathering space made entirely from recycled fabric panels.
Over the past 20 years, Haynes has developed a groundbreaking approach to textile portraiture, blending architecture, photography, and reclaimed materials into quilted compositions that challenge the boundary between craft and fine art. He created his signature portrait method in his early twenties—an innovation that has since been widely emulated—and has gone on to teach hundreds of students across the globe. Every one of his pieces is made entirely from salvaged textiles, a practice rooted in both his upbringing and his commitment to sustainability; to date, his work has diverted more than 100 tons of clothing and fabric from landfills.
Haynes’ quilts have been exhibited in over 200 museums and galleries worldwide, and are held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Quilt Museum, the Asheville Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and many others. He is widely recognized by the media and fine art institutions as a pillar of the modern quilting movement, and is celebrated for expanding the possibilities of what quilts can be—sculptural, narrative, architectural, and profoundly human.
At its core, Haynes’ work is about making order from chaos, building systems of care, and honoring the quiet power of comfort objects. Through every stitch, he asks: what does it mean to create a home when you never had one? And what might healing look like when sewn from the scraps?
Rates & Enrollment
Day Student Tuition: $1,090.00
Full 5-Day Package*: $2,807.85 – $3,021.69
*5-Day Workshop Package includes: Tuition for 5 full class days, 6 nights of dinner, lodging, breakfast, daily cookie and fruit breaks, unlimited coffee and tea, and welcoming wine and cheese reception. Your choice between a room to yourself (single occupancy) or bring a friend and split a room (double occupancy).
Get more information about your options to enroll here.