CAROLIN KROPFF

When I was 5 years old, a tailor came to our house and sewed my Sunday dresses in the ironing room on a Pfaff treadle machine. I always loved watching her, picking up the pins that had fallen to the floor, and marveling at how this little woman could conjure up such lovely outfits. She lived in a small half-timbered house in Brilon and had a hump. To me, she was a figure straight out of a fairy tale. When I was 15, because I didn’t have enough allowance, I took down the red c

From June 15 to 18, 2026, at the invitation of the Heussenstamm Stiftung, I worked with a group of 12 ninth-grade students at the Anne Frank Schule for four days. As a hands-on introduction to the world of textile arts—using patchwork and quilts as concrete examples—the students created various fabric pieces by hand, which they designed on their own. We used a lightweight wool fleece from a shepherds’ cooperative as batting. In the process, they familiarized themselves with t

"Painting and textiles Painting is the freest of all the arts. Forms and colors play across the surface, forming a fabric whose diversity is infinite; its essence is not boundaries, but a thousandfold network of interconnections." Theodor Hetzer: Bild als Bau "I give you the end of a golden thread, Just wind it into a ball: It will lead you to the gates of heaven, Built into the walls of Jerusalem." William Blake, Jerusalem What draws me to painting is the same thing that