Pecolia Leola Deborah Jackson was born in a log house near Bentonia, Mississippi, and raised in Yazoo City, the ninth of eleven children.
[1] She learned to make quilts from her mother Katie (a trained teacher) and other older women in her community.
"[3] Warner worked various jobs as a domestic servant in Chicago, Illinois and New Orleans, Louisiana before retiring home to Mississippi in 1968.
[6] In 1977, director William R. Ferris featured Warner in the documentary film "Four Women Artists," produced by the Center for Southern Folklore, as one of the four Mississippi women in the title, along with writer Eudora Welty, painter Theora Hamblett, and embroiderer Ethel Wright Mohamed.
[11] A song by Louisiana folksinger Kevin Gordon, titled "Pecolia's Star," is about Warner's quilts.