I hate to sound dumb here, but I'm gonna go ahead anyways.
I have read all 10 pages and am just as confused as I was during the first post. I look at tons of patterns and blocks on-line and in numerous books, to get inspiration. Then if I see something that speaks to me, I figure out, on my own, how to make it. Most of the time, I never look up a pattern or tute for it, I do the math and graphing myself. But what I am getting from all this is: if I do follow through and make the item based off the inspiration project/pic/block/ etc.., that if I sell that item, I have now infinged on someone's work because they made it to begin with?? Tell me this is not so!! What is the point of even preserving the quilting tradition, if not for inspiration and to keep quilting alive?
I used to visit a well-known site several hours at a sitting, several days a week. I happened to see a block on that site that I had spent days "creating" on my own, before seeing it on her site. I did some digging on her site and found her copyright statement regarding using patterns on her site so I emailed her to ask if I could use it in a quilt I was making to sell, since I had spent days drafting it myself. I was told no, unless you can prove, without a doubt, that it is truly your design you are making to sell and not copying mine. ???What???
Same type of thing with the Twister tool and quilts made from it. I read and followed a tute, on here, to make my own template but I only use 4" unfinished squares to start with and the "tool" I made is a 2 1/2" square. Imagine my surprise when I was told I can not sell these types of quilts either as I would be infringing on the Twister makers rights.
So, I have just decided to make what I want to make, the way I want to make them and do what I choose with them. If someone wants to sue me because I was inspired enough to do the "designing" part of the work myself and not from their published patterns/books, then go for it! If I could afford the price of "patterns" to begin with I wouldn't have to do all that work myself! But, if that were the case then the satisfaction I get out of making it work so it all fits nicely would be gone and there would be no point.