Marie led the quilt revival in the early 20th century. She revolutionized appliqué quilting and wrote the first book of quilt history. She operated her quilt design business from her home in Marion Indiana.
An influential Quilt designer of the early 1900s, Marie Webster was the first person to writer a history of quilts, and was also an astute businesswoman. Her floral appliqué designs, created at the height of the Arts and Crafts Movement, are still widely appreciated and imitated today.
Born in the town of Wabash in northern Indiana, Marie was the oldest of the six children of Josiah Scott Daugherty and Minerva Harriett Lamoureaux Daugherty. Both of her parents families had migrated westward from Ohio about 1850, and settled as pioneer farmers in the fertile Wabash River Valley. Josiah was a prosperous businessman and bank president. Minerva was and excellent needlewoman who taught her three daughters the plain and fancy sewing skills so important to domestic life in the 19th century.
Marie received her only formal education in the Wabash public schools, graduating from high school in 1878. Her ambition was to acquire a higher education, but her parents considered her too frail to leave home. There is no record that she ever took art classes, but she was a voracious reader and studied Greek and Latin at home.
In 1884 she married George Webster, Jr. of Marion Indiana who would become a respected banker and civic leader. After his death in 1938, Marie continued to live in Marion until 1942, when she moved to Princeton, New Jersey to live with her son until her death in 1956 at the age of ninety seven.
Marie did not start making appliqué quilts until 1905. Unable to find a pattern that she liked, she decided to design one of her own. She sent the quilt to Ladies Home Journal, the leading womens magazine of the day. There her quilt caught the eye of editor, Edward Bok. He invited her to submit more designs for a full color page. She created the Iris, Snowflake, and Wind Blown Tulip quilts. They appeared in the January 1, 1911 edition of the Ladies Home Journal and were viewed by one and a half million women. Marie became a national celebrity.
The demand for her patterns was so great that soon she was filling orders from her home at 926 S Washington Street in Marion. While creating new designs Marie was also busy researching and writing her book “Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them” which was published in October 1915.
Her mail order pattern business thrived. As the quilt revival gained momentum after World War I, Marie decided to sell kits, basted quilts and finished quilts in addition to the patterns. In 1921 her cottage business became the Practical Patchwork Company. She remained active in the business until her retirement in 1942.
In recognition of her pioneering work, Marie Webster was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1991. Her legacy is inspiring others to create quilts, to appreciate quilting as an art form, and to preserve this heritage for the future. She would be delighted to know that her home has become the Quilters Hall of Fame. |
