Marie Webster

Marie Daugherty Webster (July 19, 1859 – August 29, 1956) was a quilt designer, quilt producer, and businesswoman, as well as a lecturer and author of Quilts, Their Story, and How to Make Them (1915), the first American book about the history of quilting, reprinted many times since. She also ran the Practical Patchwork Company, a quilt pattern making business from her home in Wabash, Indiana, for more than thirty years. Webster's appliquéd quilts influenced modern quilting designs of the early twentieth century. Her quilts have been featured in museums and gallery exhibition in the United States and Japan. The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds the largest collection of her quilts in the United States. Webster was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1991. The Marie Webster House, her former residence in Marion, Indiana, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993, and serves as the present day home of the Quilters Hall of Fame.

Marie Daugherty was born on July 19, 1859, in Wabash, Indiana, to Minerva Harriet (Lumaree) and Josiah Scott Daugherty. She was oldest of the family's six children. Her father was an entrepreneur, bank president, and civic leader in Wabash. During her childhood, Daugherty learned the art of fine handsewing from her mother. She was educated in the Wabash public schools, graduating from Union School in Wabash in 1878. Daugherty's parents discouraged her from attending college and she had no formal art training. Although needlework became a favorite pastime of hers, she did not start designing quilts until the age of fifty.

Marie Daugherty married George Webster Jr. of Marion, Indiana, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1884. Marie and George Webster established their home in Marion where they spent most of their fifty four years of married life. Marie 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. The couple also traveled in the United States and in Europe until George's severe rheumatoid arthritis forced his retirement from the bank around 1910 and ended their travels. Around 1909 Marie took up quilting while caring for her ailing husband. George Webster died in 1938. In 1942, Webster and her sister relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, to join Lawrence Webster and his family.

In 1909 at the age of fifty, Webster made her first appliquéd 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. 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. In its January 1911 issue, the magazine featured for the first time using full color pages, four of Webster's quilt designs ("Pink Rose," "Iris," "Snowflake," and "Wind blown Tulip") which were stylized designs inspired by her garden flowers. More of her appliquéd quilts were published as full color features in the Ladies' Home Journal issues for August 1911, January 1912, and August 1912. Webster had subsequent quilt designs published in other women's magazines. By 1930 the company's catalog included thirty three of her designs. These qualities also made her designs unusual for that time. Her quilt motifs were typically inspired from nature, especially flowers from her garden, with popular pattern such as "Iris," "Poppy," "Daisies," "Sunflower," "Poinsetta," "Morning Glory," "Pink Rose," and "Grapes and Vines." 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. "Marie Webster Quilts: A Retrospective," a traveling exhibition, was shown in the 1990s at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the American Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San Jose, California; the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City; the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas; and in 2000 at the IMA Columbus Gallery in Columbus, Indiana. Twenty four 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. Webster's work was also shown in other exhibitions, including those at the Bard Graduate School of Design in New York City in 2000–01, the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2001, and at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis in 2001–02. The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds the largest collection of her quilts in the United States.