Marie Webster
She also ran the Practical Patchwork Company, a quilt pattern-making business from her home in Wabash, Indiana, for more than thirty years.
[6][7] Marie and George Webster established their home in Marion where they spent most of their fifty-four years of married life.
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.
The kits initially sold for fifty cents each and included instructions, pattern templates, and a picture of the completed quilt.
[3][7][14] In 1912, Doubleday, Page, and Company invited Webster to research and write a book about the history of quilting and pattern names.
[b] Webster took a broad view of the subject in her book, tracing its origins in Egypt, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Renaissance.
[13] Webster's extensively researched book received favorable reviews from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Boston Herald.
Around 1921, the popularity of Webster's appliqué quilt designs led her to form The Practical Patchwork Company with two friends, Ida Hess and Evangeline Beshore, and her sister, Emma Daugherty.
The company, whose motto was "A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever," specialized in selling her original designs in kits that included packaged patterns, instruction sheets, and precut fabric quilting pieces.
"[15] 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.
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.
[9][15] During the 1920s and 1930s, Webster wrote articles for periodicals; however, she did not create any new designs for a time after her husband died in 1938, and friends and associates ran the business.
[17] Webster and her associates continued to operate the Practical Patchwork Company from her home in Marion, Indiana, until she retired at the age of eighty-three in 1942.
Webster and her sister, Emma Daugherty, left the mail-order business in Indiana to join her son and his family after they moved to Princeton, New Jersey.
[4][11] After suffering a stroke from which she never fully recovered, Webster died in Princeton, New Jersey, on August 29, 1956, at the age of ninety-seven.
Her former residence on South Washington Street in Marion, Indiana, where she lived from 1902 to 1942, it the present-day home of the Quilters Hall of Fame.
