[quote=butterflywing]if it's old, if people have been doing it before you came along, how can it be yours? because you wrote it down? give me a break!
i still don't understand how anyone can 'own' the unmentionable 'dear jane', made of blocks from the 1800's by a long-dead lady.[quote]
The DJ quilt, as with all old/vintage/antique quilts, is owned by someone, maybe a museum, possibly a person.
So they have the rights to it that way.
But the instructions for reproducing the old blocks and the old quilt are copyrighted by the person who wrote them out, even though it comes decades/centuries later.
I suspect more than one person can make up instructions on how to reproduce something that is already old, and both be within their rights to copyright THEIR set of instructions.
You are right, it is very complicated!