While celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, we also honor remarkable businesswomen throughout history. A quilt conversation about early businesswomen is incomplete without mention of quilt designer Ruby Short McKim.
In 1916, as a young woman, Ruby won a Kansas City Star quilt design contest. Her winning pattern, Quaddy Quilties, was printed in the newspaper launching her long career as a quilt designer. She became the first contributor of Kansas City Star quilt patterns (1928) and, from 1921 until 1937, twenty-three of her series quilts were syndicated in newspapers across the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Ruby also designed and published many other appliquéd and pieced quilt patterns and, in 1931, one book, 101 Patchwork Patterns. However, she may not be as well-known for her mail-order quilting…
