At the Bauhaus she began her first year under Georg Muche and then Johannes Itten. Fleischmann struggled to find her particular workshop at the Bauhaus. Women were barred from certain disciplines taught at the school and during her second year, unable to gain admission to a glass workshop with future husband Josef Albers, Fleischmann deferred reluctantly to weaving, the only workshop available to women. She found that the weaving workshop was the only option open and to her dismay she gave it a try. Fleischmann had never tried weaving and believed it to be too "sissy" of a craft. With her instructor Gunta Stölzl, however, Fleischmann soon learned to appreciate the challenges of tactile construction and began producing geometric designs. In her writing, titled "Material as Metaphor", Albers mentions her Bauhaus beginnings: "In my case it was threads that caught me, really against my will. To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over."