Martha Madison byline from Peerless Fashion Service
After the demise of Peerless about 1956, the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate transferred their pattern distribution to General Features Corporation and the Martha Madison byline and The Little Catalog of Just Quilts were created replacing Carol Curtis. This transition is probably when the words, The Progressive Farmer, were intentionally and deliberately cut away from the pattern sheets ordered through Progressive Farmer magazine. Collectors had long suspected that this rather dramatic cutting of the pattern sheets suggested that something important had changed regarding the patterns but never discovered just what it was.
Contrary to the address on this Little Catalog, orders from the newspaper ads were mailed to Morris Plains, New Jersey, the location of the Spinning Wheel Company.
Prior to 1956, the vast majority of the former Nancy Cabot / Chicago Tribune quilt patterns distributed by Peerless had only been among the ones published in the Tribune during 1933 and 1934, but the Martha Madison byline revived many of the 1935-1938 Cabot / Tribune patterns that had not been available to quiltmakers for twenty years.
The Martha Madison patterns continued until 1971-1972 when General Features discontinued patterns of all types thus ending the distribution of the Nancy Cabot quilt designs originated by the Chicago Tribune from January 22, 1933, through July 31, 1938.
