Originally Posted by tooMuchFabric
Originally Posted by bearisgray
Interestingly enough, the quilt made by Jane A. Stickle - completed during the civil war - seems to be a money maker for the author of the Dear Jane book, Brenda Manges Papadakis.
People find the original quilt charming, and Papadakis wrote down some instructions how to make those squares.
Her instructions are copyrighted.
Anyone could probably look at the original quilt and reproduce fairly accurately the patches that make up the quilt, but it's a lot of work,
and buying someone's already-developed instructions is waaay easier than making it all up from scratch.
The book does not give any specific instructions for how to make an individual block. There are some general piecing instructions at the beginning of the book - wash the fabric, cut accurately, check your seam allowances and finished block size - sort of thing.
BMP said (in the book) that she drafted the blocks "in the manner of . . . " which I suppose would give her some leeway in how accurately drawn they actually are.
I understand that the software may be "better" - and some of the blocks more closely resemble the ones that Jane made than the drawings in the Dear Jane book.