Frau Hettlage received the impetus to quilt during a study abroad in the United States at the Academy of Art Collage, San Francisco. She was particularly impressed by modern interpretations of graphic quilts. The "New crafts movement" was unknown to her from Germany, and the feminist aspect naturally fascinated her. Thus Frau Hettlage sees herself with her work in the tradition of "Feminist Artists" who consciously use female methods to express themselves.

She finds inspiration for her motifs, for example, on the tiled sidewalks along the waterfront promenade in Essaouira, Morocco, or through the analysis of traditional patchwork techniques such as "Flying Geese" or "Half Square Triangles". Through Sashiko, a traditional Japanese stitching technique that she discovered via the detour of "Visible Mending", she found her way to "Slow Stitching" and thus sets a counterpoint to Western acceleration society.

In all of this, she is aware that the boundaries between appreciation and cultural appropriation are fluid. With every stitch, she realizes how glaringly unequal the same work is sometimes valued in different parts of the world, and she wonders: How much is whose work worth? And what does this do to the time culture of societies?