Make wishtv.com your home page

Clean city campaign begins with daisies, a nod to 20th century quilt

A quilt in the Quilters Hall of Fame in Marion, Indiana, shows the design of Marie D. Webster. (Provided Photo/Quilters Hall of Fame)

MARION, Ind. (WISH) — Marion city government is encouraging people to plant white daisies as part of its Clean City 2.0 campaign.

The flower choice is a nod to an early 20th century quilt designer.

The white daisy is the official city flower as a result of the Hall of Fame quilt design. Encouraging its planting is the start of a clean city campaign that was one of four goals of the new Republican mayor, Ronald Mor­rell Jr.

A news release from the city government said, “The com­mu­ni­ty will start to see the image of the white daisy pop up around town, and more so, will be encour­aged to plant them around their homes and places of busi­ness to cel­e­brate Marion’s new jour­ney toward a clean­er city. The city flower will con­nect the com­mu­ni­ty as the first phase of the Clean City 2.0 ini­tia­tive, which is May­or Morrell’s main focus in regen­er­at­ing Mar­i­on, pay­ing homage to cam­paigns of the past.”

The release cited Marie D. Webster, a quilt designer and an entrepreneur from about 1905 to 1942, as the inspiration for planting white daisies. Webster also is known as one of the first Americans to write a history of quilts.

The former Webster family home in Marion once had a garden of daisies that inspired the quilter to make a design with the flower. Today, that former home houses the Quilters Hall of Fame. The white daisy of Webster’s quilts and quilt patterns was sold worldwide, the museum says.

Webster was born in 1859 in Wabash to parents who had migrated from Ohio to become pioneer farmers. Her father eventually became a bank president. Her mother, Minerva, “was an excellent needlewoman who taught her three daughters those plain and fancy sewing skills so important to domestic life in the nineteenth century,” the Hall of Fame biography of Webster says.

Webster died in Aug. 29, 1956, at age 97, in New Jersey.

The daisies are just the start of the clean city campaign, the mayor says. Mor­rell says he and his team are final­izing measurable goals under Clean City 2.0.

Marion, a Grant County city of 28,000 residents, is about a 90-minute drive northeast of downtown Indianapolis.

Below are photos, of Marie D. Webster and her daisy quilt provided by the Quilters Hall of Fame.

Below is a provided image from the Marion city government.