Born into a peasant family, in 1931 Marguerite Sirvins manifests schizophrenic disorders that result in her hospitalization. Thirteen years later she starts to produce drawings, watercolors, and embroideries. For the last of these she takes pieces of cloth, adding colored silks and woolen yarn she obtains by unpicking rags. She stops creating when she is increasingly troubled by hallucinations, but produces a wedding gown as a final work in 1955.
Work by Marguerite Sirvins was presented at the Drouin Gallery in 1949, and hers was the first piece of embroidery to be included in the collection of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut.