Local receives special quilt

Last year at the 39th annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show animal portrait quilter Diane Rickenbacher of Pollock Pines, California surprised Dan and Stephanie O'Neill, a Sisters couple, with two quilts of their huskies Kaiya and Keynu as a gift.

What made this story even more unique is that Rickenbacher and the O'Neills were virtual strangers and had only met at the quilt show in Sisters the year before. Rickenbacher had been admiring the O'Neills' two dogs and had taken a couple of snapshots of them with her camera, chatted a few moments and then went back to Pollock Pines after the quilt show.

After looking at the photos again back home, Rickenbacher decided to turn the photos into quilts as a random act of kindness, and surprise the O'Neills at next year's quilt show, if she could find them.

And find them she did with the help of Ponderosa Properties Realtor Ali Mayea.

"Since we didn't know where to find the O'Neills, we stopped at Ponderosa Properties to ask around, since we purchased our summer home in Sisters from one of the Realtors there, which always seems to be rented during Sisters quilt show. But nobody knew who the dogs belonged to in the photo I was showing around, except Ali Mayea, who happened to be there at the time," explained Rickenbacher.

Mayea not only knew the O'Neills, the pet parents of the two huskies, but hatched an elaborate plan of how to surprise them with Rickenbacher's quilts.

"Without her, who knows if we would have found them," Rickenbacher added.

And the saga continued with yet another random act of kindness by Rickenbacher at the 40th anniversary of Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.

"Ali was the one who found the O'Neills and organized the whole surprise. I was very grateful. So after my husband, Rick, and I returned to California from last year's quilt show, I decided to make a special quilt for Ali using a photo of her Australian shepherd Rainey that she emailed me after I returned home. I gave it to Ali as a gift when we arrived in Sisters a couple of days ago."

And it truly is "A Timeless Tapestry" for Mayea, as is the theme of the 2015 SOQS, and poster by Dennis McGregor.

"It is such a true likeness of Rainey that will live on forever," said Mayea looking at the quilt Rickenbacher made. "We got Rainey when she was only eight weeks old and in 2009 our veterinarian told us she had cancer and only had about 18 months to live. They removed the tumor and she is still here with us, and that was six years ago, she is such a survivor! What a wonderful gift to receive."

Rickenbacher has also entered two quilts in SOQS for the fourth year in a row.