here's another way to look at it - if you make public domain pattern, most likely it will be recognized as such - for instance, a double wedding ring - you make it using your own fabric choices, color choices, quilting choices and you love it - everybody else says 'what a beautiful double wedding ring' and all are happy.... no problems
ok, say you design a NEW block (hard to do in this day and age) and you LOVE IT.. and again, you agonize over the color/fabric/quilting choices and when finished you have a gorgeous one-of-a-kind quilt that you are so proud of, and every body who sees it says, 'WOW that's fantastic!'
and you post a photo on here because, naturally you are tickled to death with it and so proud of it, and have never done anything quite so gorgeous in your life and are fit to burst with joy over the thing...
and two weeks later somebody else who said, 'wow, I love that and I can do that' posts an identical quilt...
that's what it's all about... are you going to say, 'hey, that's fine, I'm flattered' or are you going to say, 'wait a minute, that was MY personal design' ??
believe me, just using 'traditional' patterns and all the new fabrics is about as creative as I get but I haven't seen any other quilts like mine...
we did a block of the month in guild - everybody made their own fabric choices and sashing choices and final finishing choices - even tho we all used the same blocks (12) every single quilt is different....