I started quilting with a vengeance with the rotary cutter. I have tons of patterns of the newspaper era but for the most part never conquered them. I would watch my oldest sister sail along with these patterns and was in awe. I still have some of her pieces that she cut and many blocks she made. Mind you she was doing these back in the 1930's and 40's. I didn't learn to really quilt with ease until the early 90's and played around with a few applique or plain squares in the 70's and 80's. I tried to graph out blocks and was not to successful. Kudos to you for these early skills. I believe that this 'art' needs to be taught again before it dies away. I use quilt pro to add the 1/4" to my own designs and am very please with how my blocks come out.
I think today the ease of making the quilt pieces is what new quilters are looking for. Computers and made things so much easier and since those that ask are already here on the computer that would be what is being requested.
The other question is the name of a given pattern. As we know there are thousands of different pattern and you could spend months looking for a pattern or the name of a pattern. Asking, maybe someone has made it and this can make the search easier just knowing the name. The Quilter Cache
https://www.quilterscache.com/QuiltBlocksGalore.html is a big help for both.