A couple of days ago there was a post about sharing a pattern. I admire the new ideas and blocks that people put together and certainly my stash of magazines, books, patterns attest to that. And, yes, a specific new block or technique should be credited and paid for.
My vent is that I have seen a lot of "patterns" lately that use old, traditonal blocks or ideas... for example, chinese coins with Jelly Roll strips or charm squares or layer cakes, etc. Now if someone wants to write instructions about doing that pattern with one of these pre-cuts, okay.... but I don't feel obliged to "credit" them if I make a Chinese coin quilt using a jelly roll if I don't use their pattern instructions. It doesn't seem right that just because they wrote up instructions means they own the credit for using a jellyroll in a Chinese coin quilt. And if a fellow quilter asks me to show her how I did it and figured things out, I will tell her if I want to -- and I usually do because infecting someone else with this "disease" is fun!! These precuts save quilters a lot of time chosing fabrics and cutting... but using them in some traditional block/quilt and claiming that credit is owed seems ridiculous to me.
I have seen "patterns" for D9P set on point, -- anything set on point, double 4 patch, etc. I have sewn a long time, and yes, it takes time to figure out how I am going to cut and piece something and therefore how much fabric I need. But that is part of the pleasure for me.
I hate to think that as I "mess around" with my fabric and graph paper or more sophisticated tools, I have to be constantly aware or do research about whether anyone has copyrighted something similar -- particularly if I am selling the finished project.
Thanks for listening... guess I needed to get his off my mind and heart.
I have done the search on copyright discussions on this board and read thru them. the link for
http://qnm.com/copyright/index.html
is no longer active so if someone knows how to get to that again, I would love to read that....