At a time when most families seemed to have 10 or 12 children, Marilla had only Katie and then Eula Mae to raise-perhaps this is how she managed the time to make so many quilts. Marilla married Andrew J. Siddens on Feb 11, 1877 at Oak Grove, Nebraska, and records indicate that they farmed in or visited several midwestern states. Katie was born in June 1884 in Boone County, Iowa. At some point after Andrew died in 1926, Marilla moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where son-in-law Calvin had gone from a teaching career to become a postal letter carrier.

Throughout all of the moves, being a true quilter, Marilla must have hung on to every scrap of fabric she encountered. Her hand pieced quilts and tops have thousands of pieces of fabric. Some of them were obviously pieced with whatever she could find, but others were carefully planned out with the luxury of enough fabric for an integrated design. Her favorite color must have been orange, as she used it so often.

In the earliest years, any night quilting was done by kerosene lamp.