Lawsuits and Quilters

March 23, 2012March 23, 2012 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

My friend Rhonda sent me news of this latest scuffle involving quilters and the law, as a follow-up to my post about Pinterest.

I’m piecing this together (no pun intended) by reading the blogs of the two women involved: Emily Cier, of Carolina Patchworks and Kate Spain. As I understand it, Moda sent Emily some of Kate Spain’s fabric to use in a quilt, which she did, and put it in her book.

As a side light, a tote bag was made to publicize the book (shown above in a screenshot from Amazon). This particular screen shot was right above another shot of other quilters having their own totes as well (shown below).

Emily Cier received one of those very cheerful cease and desist letters, which basically puts the fear of God into you, if you’ve ever received one. They are very effective. She blogged about it.

Then Kate Spain, whose fabric is shown on the tote, blogged about her side of it too. She gave an little illustration of how copyright works, encouraged others to continue using her fabric and tried to soothe the populace. But we live in a digital, trigger-happy world, and I must admit some of the comments made me cringe.

But others had a legitimate question: if they create using Spain’s fabrics and that fabric is shown in books and on patterns, will they be sued as well? I read through all the comments and didn’t see a response to that, but it was made clear once one commenter provided a link to Amazon and the tote bag.

And, then Emily followed up with a response.

I see the difference between the two issues–and if I were Kate Spain, I’d probably jump around too–but then does that mean that we can only use our own fabrics if, by chance, we become well-known enough (as in Emily’s case) to publish a book and want a promotional tote made to publicize our book? Somehow I don’t think Emily meant to appropriate Spain’s fabric designs, but instead was happy to have her quilt publicized on a tote.

In both cases–the Pinterest issue that I raised earlier and this one–it seem to me that copyright laws are at the core. Many commented that the threat of lawsuits had disrupted their “pinning” habit, and they were a bit irked. (Agreed. However I do wish there were a way for Pinterest to “poke” or ping me when one of my images was being used. Before I had a Pinterest account, there were no notifications whatsoever.) And like one of my commentors, I’ve been frustrated by the amount of quilt designs that I once thought were in the public domain, being licensed and appropriated for a quilter’s business. I remember even being disgusted when another icon of the blogging age, The Pioneer Woman, claimed the recipe for Texas Sheet Cake — which has been in my recipe file for about a century — as “her” buttermilk-chocolate cake recipe. (I kind of stopped reading her after that.)

Will we as quilters be bound by the tangle of copyright laws that seem ambiguous as best, and harmful to the creative process, at their worst? What do you think? Do threats of cease and desist lawsuits ever cross your mind when you make up a new quilt? Do you think that all of us quilters are scrapping for the same slice of pie? Or is it, as one quilter charged on Spain’s blog:

This situation is, I believe, the result of a designer who sells fabric, but is not a quilter and does not understand the process of creating quilts. A quilt is not a tea towel, paper napkin or plate. The implications for every quilt book, magazine or pattern published is simply staggering. The quilting community needs to take note of this issue.

In other words, who do you think “owns” that image on the tote bag: the fabric designer, or the quilt artist?

The Done Manifesto–FSF

March 16, 2012March 15, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

Since, during summer, Friday is my FSF–Finishing School Friday, I thought I’d mention this idea of the Done Manifesto, created when “Bre Pettis, an inventor, and collaborator Kio Stark gave themselves exactly 20 minutes to create a manifesto encapsulating everything they knew about bring a creative vision to life.” (from Infographic of the Day: 13 Rules)

I read about this some time ago, but parts of their manifesto haunt me, as I read your blogs and hear you talk about the struggle to craft a balance between your time blogging/interneting and quilting. Here’s the full list; focus in on number 12:

Some of my “done” quilting is ghostly, existing on pinboards, and websites and floating around on the internet, and on this blog. You have to take my word for it–my quilts exist in real time, with the soft hand of cloth, quilting, and batting, sewn together with the whir of a finely tuned machine. I love reading your comments, interacting and forming online friendships with you (one of the good things about blogs!), but look at Number Nine.

This one notes that to dig in and get the work done is what’s right about things (“People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.”) All of these can be applied to quilting. One of my friends completed a quilt top, hated the borders, unpicked, resewed. Another friend had begun quilting her son’s wedding quilt, hated it, unpicked, resewed. Both of these quilters embodied Number Eleven.

Number Seven? Throw it away is sometimes good. And so is to give it away–to a charity, a quiltless friend. Some quilts are made to go out into the world and not hang around in your closet. And Number Six? Will I ever finish the list of quilts I’ve dreamed of? We all know the answer to that one. But that brilliant Number Thirteen nails down the reason why doing the *real* quilting and sewing and creating is so much more satisfying: “Done is the engine of more.”

I loved all last summer when I could easily post something “done” every Friday. It’s a different satisfaction that I get from quilting than from most anything else I do in my life. My quilting stays done. I can touch it, be warm underneath it, point to it when I hang it up on a wall. It defines me. It’s my favorite work, for when I enter my quilting zone, time just flies.

This week’s finish: Doll Quilts. I heard from Kim, my daughter-in-law and they have arrived!

Something to Think About

Is Pinterest in Our Best Interest?

March 15, 2012 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

The recent brouhaha about Pinterest, a current addiction and tool, and its copyright issues, the internet and blogging made me confront some interesting and sometimes painful realities. I love the internet, but I must admit it was pretty amazing to discover that a lot of this website had been lifted up onto Pinterest. I was flattered. I was amused. I was surprised. And a touch dismayed, but I can’t really claim any part in it because it had been done by lots of other quilters who found my blog and my work interesting enough to them to pin to their wall. And I’m sure you’re not surprised that eighty-percent of Pinterest users are women. (How many of them are quilters?)

So some of my quilting exists on pinboards, and websites and floating around on the internet, where we, readers and bloggers, attempt to capture these photos so we can make more and better and more fascinating and The New and Next Big Thing! in quilt-land. To be truthful, I spent some time how to “capture” my apparent presence on Pinterest (albeit a pebble in a lake in terms of numbers, I’m sure), but in the end, failed. Late to this particular party, I set up my own Pinterest site, and started to dabble in it. I recognized that this could be a helpful tool for me to note which fabrics I liked on Spoonflower, as well as quilt ideas.

But given the copyright issues that have been raised (here and here), perhaps I should more cautious about appropriating other’s images onto my boards, even if I am thinking of this as a tool. When I talked to Cindy last night, she asked, “How is this different from the thousands of images that are lifted from Google every day?” (Like the one above.) She has some thoughts on this, too, on her blog today.

So if I don’t use it as a tool, maybe it could act as a virtual quilt show, displaying my own wares on my boards, as I noticed that some have done, acting as sort of an alternative to Flickr. Interestingly, many Flickr sites disallow “Pinning” to Pinterest, through the use of a snippet of code.

So, what do you think? Should we have more control over our own images? Or once we publish them to our websites, it’s as good as done? Are you, like I am, flattered that others like your work and are spreading your quilting gospel throughout cyberspace? Or are you someone who is trying to make a living off their own work, and are dismayed to see it distributed far and wide without your permission?

Pinterest may or may not be the next Napster, as the Wall Street Journal noted. But I’d be interested to hear what you quilters have to say about it, given our particular penchant for community. Does this enhance our quilting community? Detract from it? Weigh in with your thoughts and reflections.

Quilt Shops · Something to Think About

Spring Break/Mind Break

March 13, 2012March 14, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

I took off for Spring Break early. My colleague and friend Judy is covering my class and after class on Monday, we high-tailed it out of town. When you see the above photo, you should probably know exactly where we are. Yep. San Francisco. And yep, it’s raining.

So, like any self-respecting quilter, I tracked down a fabric store. Actually, I grew up in this area and have come to Britex fabrics many many times. I needed some replacement buttons for my raincoat (check), picked up another color way of the typewriter fabric, and also bought a 1/2 yard of fabric from Guatemala, which I was assured that when washed, would shrink and bleed. But while I can get just about any quilting fabric online, I wouldn’t be able to get Guatemalan fabric, or so I reasoned.

I spent the rest of the day with my brother, going to lunch at Cafe Claude, then to Japantown, an mini-indoor mall where I hunted down small Japanese plastic figurines (weird, I know) and that cool decorative sticker tape that I read about on one of my favorite blogs: How About Orange. You pull it along like those hand-held adhesive tapes, but instead of glue, it lays down a line of flowers. Or hearts. Or whatever, and the cartridges are refillable.

For those of you who want some, the shop keeper said he did mail order. It’s from MaiDo, in Japantown, and the phone number is either 415-567-8901 or 415-567-7073. Try using the name “Deco Rush Pens.” How much? $5.95 each, which is high if you think you could probably buy them in Japan for three bucks, but then there’s the airfare and the hotel and meals cost to factor in. So maybe under six bucks is fine to have a whole lot of fun decorating your paper.

Here’s a few shots of San Francisco’s Union Square. In the rain.

A change is as good as a rest, my mother always says, and this change is a nice one. While I don’t have anything necessarily quilty on this post, I must admit that sometimes you just need a change to make you think about your work, your craft, again. Like those berries above. Plummy blue, pinky-purple, yellow-green. Those colors, found here in nature, might be the beginnings for an interesting quilt scheme, veering away from any ombo I might usually try. And when it’s raining, I’m forced to rest, or to try indoors things, or what else? To try something new.