Iceblossom, it's me who won't buy a pattern unless it has an actual picture of a quilt that was made from it on the advertising.
I will buy a pattern if I really like it and I want to do it right away and they sell PDF's, otherwise, I won't wait for a seller to mail me a pattern...I'm too impatient and it takes too long and is too expensive to get them from the USA. By then, I've moved on to something else.
I do buy books and get patterns from those. I'll also find free patterns on the 'net. I also design my own.
I recently bought EQ8 and have been having fun with that, so perhaps I will be buying fewer patterns.
Watson