The Stearns & Foster Co., founded in 1846, was a cotton batting manufacturer. As part of its marketing plan, Stearns & Foster began featuring colorful wrappers on their Mountain Mist batting with quilt blocks on them in the 1920s. In 1930, the company began publishing a free quilt pattern on the inside wrapping of Mountain Mist batting products as an incentive to quilters. These same patterns were available for purchase by mail-order from the Mountain Mist mail order catalog named Mountain Mist Blue Book of Quilts in the mid-1930s.