31 Facts About Marie Webster

Marie Daugherty Webster was a quilt designer, quilt producer, and businesswoman, as well as a lecturer and author of Quilts, Their Story, and How to Make Them, the first American book about the history of quilting, reprinted many times since.

Marie Webster ran the Practical Patchwork Company, a quilt pattern-making business from her home in Wabash, Indiana, for more than thirty years.

Marie Webster's quilts have been featured in museums and gallery exhibition in the United States and Japan.

Marie Webster was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1991.

Marie Webster Daugherty was born on July 19,1859, in Wabash, Indiana, to Minerva Harriet and Josiah Scott Daugherty.

Marie Webster's father was an entrepreneur, bank president, and civic leader in Wabash.

Marie Webster was educated in the Wabash public schools, graduating from Union School in Wabash in 1878.

Marie Webster became a Harvard-trained mechanical engineer and married Jeannette Scott.

Marie and George Webster established their home in Marion where they spent most of their fifty-four years of married life.

Marie Webster was devoted to her family, active in social and volunteer projects, and enjoyed reading, sewing, and amateur theater, while George became a banker and was active in civic affairs, including service on Wabash's school and library boards.

Around 1909 Marie Webster took up quilting while caring for her ailing husband.

In 1909 at the age of fifty, Marie Webster made her first appliqued quilt of her own design, adapted from the traditional "Rose of Sharon" pattern using shaped pieces cut from colored fabrics and sewn to a background fabric.

Marie Webster's friends encouraged her to send the quilt to the Ladies Home Journal, whose editor asked her to provide additional samples of her work.

Marie Webster had subsequent quilt designs published in other women's magazines.

Marie Webster took a broad view of the subject in her book, tracing its origins in Egypt, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Renaissance.

Marie Webster included chapters on quilting techniques and quilt collections, and concluded with a list of more than 400 quilt pattern names.

Marie Webster's extensively researched book received favorable reviews from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Boston Herald.

Marie Webster's book brought her national and international recognition as a quilt designer and quiltmaker and increased the popularity of her designs among quilters.

The mail-order business operating out of Marie Webster's home expanded after her quilt book was published in 1915, increasing the requests for her quilt patterns.

Marie Webster operated the mail-order business out of her home with her cofounders and the additional assistance of her family members.

Marie Webster promoted its offerings in its published catalogs, through advertising in periodicals, such as House Beautiful, and through occasional sales to retail shops.

Marie Webster created the designs, she or others in the business appliqued the pieces, and other quilters were contracted to do the quilting.

Marie Webster designed dozens of quilts and became a leader of the early twentieth century quilting revival.

Marie Webster's designs rejected the bright colors and heavily-embroidered "Crazy Quilt" patterns of the late nineteenth century in favor of the simple, appliqued quilts that were popular in the mid-nineteenth century.

Marie Webster frequently used a palette of soft, muted pastels and modern designs that were less elaborate and more realistic, as opposed to the stylized forms and bright colors of the late Victorian era.

Marie Webster is remembered as a pioneer in the design, production, marketing, and selling of quilt patterns, as well as a quilt lecturer and author of Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them, America's first full-length book on the history of quilts.

Marie Webster ran a quilt pattern-making business from her home in Wabash, Indiana, for more than thirty years.

Several sources recognize the influence that Marie Webster's appliqued quilts had on quilting designs of the twentieth century.

Marie Webster was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1991.

Marie Webster's quilts have been featured in museums and galleries in the United States and in Japan, beginning with an exhibition at Marshall Field's galleries in Chicago, Illinois, in 1911.

Twenty-four Marie Webster-designed quilts, along with others created by quilt designers Rose Kretsinger and Carrie Hall, were featured in the "American Applique Quilt" exhibition in 1998 in galleries and museums throughout Japan, including in Tokyo.