Marguerite Ickis was inducted into The Quilters Hall of Fame during the last year of her life an enthralled the audience that evening in 1979. She proudly revealed that she had “lived nine lives.” She was a botanist, worked for the Girl Scouts, was an editor, a dean, writer, quilter, researcher, ran an inn and restaurant, and upon retirement became a painter of real life scenes.

 

Quilters know her for book The Standard Book of Quilt Making and Collecting that was published in 1949. It was reprinted in 1959 by Dover Publications Company and has been one of their best selling books, the “how-to quilters’ bible,” in the United States and Europe for over thirty years.

 

She wrote many other books on arts and crafts.

 

After retirement she moved to Cape Cod where she took up her “ninth life” of painting pictures that convey stories as remembered from her Ohio childhood.