| Sandy Klop had her first exposure to the world of colorful patterns while watching Klompen dancers perform. Every year in May her hometown of Holland, Michigan, celebrated tulip time in a vast array of Dutch costumes. Marching bands, floats and children holding poles to stay in line, filled the tulip-lined streets for four days. She was first exposed to quilting in 1979 at her sister-in-laws when she returned from teaching in Iran. She went on to teach art in Saudi Arabia for the next four years. She loved the rich colors and patterns in the tiles and carpets of the Middle East. When she returned to California she began to make pattern samples for a local quilt store. From there she moved to doing machine quilting. She now quilts full-time in her studio at home on her second commercial quilting machine. Since 1990 she has worked in a local quilt store and taught many quilting classes. She has machine quilted thousands of quilts and made hundreds of quilts ranging in style from traditional to story and folk art quilts. In 2005, Sandy and her husband Stan went to France for a second time for design inspiration. |