The title sums up my way of working: In the first step, I dye the fabrics with very intense colors, and occasionally fabrics are also painted. I develop the shapes and their composition from my professional experience. What I do is actually two-dimensional, but in my job, in fashion design, things are three-dimensional. So you can put the two-dimensional shapes together and then a three-dimensional structure would arise - which you can also wear!

Yes! (She laughs.) I develop the models so that there are no darts. The darts are turned up and placed in such a way that they cannot be noticed. I also teach that at the Competence Center for Fashion and Design in Nuremberg. The curve has to fit with a good cut, the simplest example of hip swing. Especially with my series “Transformation” and “Profile” - a selection of which is represented in the exhibition - there are such two-dimensional implementations of perfect wrappings - so, sewing patterns, if you will. But only professional colleagues recognize this.

I taught at the Aschaffenburg technical college for clothing technology, until I took a break to raise my two children. That was a bit boring. I then signed up for a patchwork course in a Limburg fabric shop. I went straight to the “Kreativa - Dortmund” with the shop owner's father. There we sold the patchwork patterns we had designed.
At this fair I met a woman from Frankfurt who makes hand-dyed fabrics. With her I went to a workshop with well-known patchwork teachers in Rolduc, the Netherlands.

Patchwork originally comes from England and the USA. It was actually born out of necessity: making new things out of old materials and leftovers. The Amish people have refined it. They drove it to perfection and an art scene soon developed from it. With my favorite teacher Nancy Crow, a patchwork icon in the USA, I took courses in Germany, France and especially in Switzerland.

I start by drafting by hand or working on the computer. I then change this basic idea during the work process - usually because the material may not be enough to suit the design. First the top layer of fabric, i.e. the picture, is put together. I've been working with inlays for several years, which means that the shapes are chosen so that there are as few seams as possible that would be seen in the hand-dyed fabric. I developed this technique because I didn't want to destroy the pattern when cutting through it. In the patchwork community, that is what I'm known for and it is my own design handwriting, so to speak.
In the next step, an intermediate fleece and the back are added. Then finally, it is quilted.

Well, that depends on how big the pieces are. You have to imagine it this way with the big jobs: A big roll lies on my shoulder, in front of me is the sewing machine and a long table. Then it is quilted with multi-color yarn. On my quilts there is a seam every half an inch and for a large part I need 1000 meters of yarn. That is already hard work. In the end, the quilt's edges are invisibly set in.

Few. I only work on my own work during the school holidays. It takes me about 70 hours to make a large quilt, and then I have to be able to stick with it. It's a creative process and you need a certain flow. That's why I like going to workshops, because there is only one topic: quilts.

It was nice that a second prize for color selection went to me at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.

In the exhibition in my hometown of Gunzenhausen I also wanted to show my developmental steps. There is a technique from the series “Desert Storm” and “Nuance” for which I have put patterned blocks together. This design has changed over and over again. In the "Giants" series, full-surface motifs dominate the composition for the first time. The "Cryptic" series are also smaller works in my own "secret script". And when it comes to “Transformations”, working with patterns suits me. Still, the whole thing may have its roots in pattern design, but it's a creative process that goes beyond that. An artistic process. For me, the craftsmanship of textile art is not work, but meditation.