When I first saw Tonye’s colorful hand appliqué work at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show I knew she was the perfect creative partner. I’d been searching for someone who could translate my paintings into fabric, someone who had my same sense of color, dimension, and whimsy. Next step… I had to search her out and hound her endlessly until she agreed to collaborate with me!

Our first piece was created as a donation for the annual Sisters Arts Fundraiser—My Own Two Hands. My part, the painting, was a scene from our cabin on the Metolius in Camp Sherman. (See … I hooked her in since she has been living in Camp Sherman for the last 34 years and I knew she would have a great idea about what to quilt to perfectly compliment the cabin scene from her neighborhood!) Tonye’s part was this great little red cinder (Camp Sherman identifying ingredient) road lined by the round shapes of manzanita bushes. Bumping down the road was an old blue truck with a yellow dog—ears flapping riding in the back. Spectacular! Whimsical, colorful, perfect!!! The piece was the darling of the auction and brought in nearly $5000 for the event… we knew we were on to something good!

We have had so much fun creating a series of pieces centering around the Sisters and Camp Sherman area. Our heroine, Miss Dotty—famous for her polka dot attire is a notable feature in the series. Tonye first spotted Miss Dotty in the Sisters Farmers Market painting—digging in her purse looking for change while she shops for salad, her faithful dog Yello waiting in her truck Ol Blue. Miss Dotty and her truck and dog appear in all the paintings… whether they are shopping for salad or flowers. In Metolius Cabin Cruiser you even get to see Miss Dotty’s famous Camp Sherman polka dot roofed cabin!

After creating the series of framed images Tonye and I hosted a show at Sisters Art Works during the 2006 Sisters Around The Block Art Stroll.. The reaction to the collaboration was overwhelmingly supportive and reinforced our idea of creating a limited edition of each of the five Miss Dotty series to sell. My paintings are being reproduced as fine art giclees and Tonye’s pieces are being reproduced by a cottage sewing industry in a Chinese village ( she met them several years ago while traveling in China—another story for another time!). After the first of the year we will have The Miss Dotty series of five different images available. This series will be a limited run of 25 of each piece. If you would like information regarding the purchase of these colorful and whimsical images email me at kathy@Kathydeggendorfer.com or through High Desert Gallery in Sisters.

Well… we finished that series and are off again creating and designing new and exciting pieces every week. One day we throw down a duvet cover with a big square in it’s center and just start placing big pieces of fabric from Tonye’s stash of cottons all over it to make colorful duvet….then I ran over to my paints and tried to capture what we have created on the paper—tweaking and recolorizing … exciting!!! Meanwhile we decided to make pillow covers with some of the new ideas…no, how about fabric, no…how about tea towels… YIKES…. Just like Maya Lin (the famous architect who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC) says,

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.