If you want to start a group for making quilts together, pick a pattern that everyone can get hold of easily and affordably. Falling in love with a quilt pattern and wanting to start a group are not things that necessarily fit together. Photocopying your pattern doesn't sound like it's legal, and we have a reason for copyright laws, they protect authors, who make little enough from their work. That said, if it's a copy of a few pages of a book, rather than an individually sold pattern, check whether this comes under "fair use". I've bought patterns for a couple of things like quilted mittens, but not for quilts, as I design my own, so I'm not sure here.
As for what teachers do, when I was at uni, the tutor who set us plays which were decades out of print (but there was one copy hidden in an anthology you couldn't take out of the library, if you knew how to look for it) had students who couldn't do the work and needed student union intervention to get the tutor to make the course passable. Whereas the tutor who always made sure every single text was easily available to purchase for a good price, which included pulling a text one year when it was hard to get hold of, had students who engaged with the course well, and was generally a good teacher. Photocopying was within the "fair use" limits, which I think are no more than 5% of a book. Sadly, the first tutor had tenure on the strength of his published research, so he could teach as badly as he liked, and also get away with being bigoted and creepy, while the second was still early on in her career, and despite being an excellent teacher, wasn't on a permanent contract.