Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

What a gorgeous day here in NW PA! I woke up to bright sunshine and happy bird song. I love mornings like this! We’ve had a couple wonderful summery days and it makes me so glad that I have a nontraditional career where I can get outside anytime I want to drink in the lovely weather. Lucky me….

We have so much to do today, we’d better get started.

The Last Blog Hop Prize Update

Hip! Hip! Hooray! I just shipped the last bunch of prizes yesterday — all 41 of ’em! I know those of you who won prizes and haven’t received them yet are probably getting a little anxious by now and today I’m happy to say the last of the Blog Hop prizes will be arriving shortly.

If you won a prize during the Blog Hop and do not receive it within the next couple weeks, please email me at tricia@villarosadesigns.com so I can look into it.

Again, thanks for your patience. I hope all of you winners enjoy your prizes!

Let’s keep moving!

And the Winner Is……….

Congratulations to Barbara in MA! She is our giveaway winner.

Thanks everyone for telling me about your favorite color combinations. Like you, I have lots of different combinations and it’s hard to pick just one. Wink, wink……..

If you didn’t get your own copy of Plan Design Quilt yet, you can find it HERE.

My Recent Copyright Issue

I love being a quilt designer and author, but sometimes things happen that make me so so frustrated. Recently, I had a copyright issue and I’d like to tell you about it.

I’ve talked about copyright and quilters a couple times before and you can find links to those posts here:

NEW April 2023 Villa Rosa Designs Rose Card Quilt Patterns and Revisiting the Copyright Question for Quilters

The Copyright Question for Quilters

I also want to remind you that I am not an expert in the field of US Copyright Law. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned by reading, researching, talking to others, and experiencing issues first hand. If you need expert advice or information about US Copyright Law, please seek the help of a Copyright lawyer.

Recently, a quilter familiar with our VRD Rose Card patterns emailed us with a screenshot showing the back of one of my Rose Card patterns — the instructions — posted on Facebook. The kicker was that the poster actually covered up the copyright information at the bottom of pattern, which indicated the person posting my pattern knew exactly what they were doing. Please don’t assume they just didn’t know that it was wrong or what they were doing was violating US copyright Laws — if they covered up the copyright info, then this was done completely intentionally.

I tried to check it out on FB, using the info on the screenshot to guide me, but I found out that the group was private. Now what? I ended up having to join the group so that I could address this copyright infringement. While waiting for my membership in the group to be active, I was able to look up the person who posted my copyrighted pattern instructions and I wrote a very firm message to them. I also found out that person was — of all people — an administrator of the Group!

When I was finally accepted into the group later the same day, I then posted a super firm comment showing the front of my pattern and telling all 3000+ members that I owned the copyright and I did not give permission to share my pattern instructions and that by doing so AND covering up the copyright information intentionally was a violation of US Copyright Law.

I also found out how to make an intellectual property complaint to Facebook, which I promptly did.

You can find Facebook’s Intellectual Property article which also includes a link to the form for reporting Intellectual Property abuse HERE.

Finally, the original post was taken down in the Group before Facebook even had the chance to do it (which told me that at least one of the administrators of the group knew it was wrong and deleted it before the group could get in trouble from Facebook). But it wasn’t deleted before over 3000 people had the opportunity to save/print/copy/repost my pattern. THEN I got grief from another one of the administrators who not only deleted my public posts in the group about copyright law and my rights as the copyright owner, but also told me that I should contact the guilty administrator and not post to the entire group. Seriously??? Not one person accepted responsibility for this nor did anyone even offer an apology! I am still seething about this experience.

You might wonder why this upsets me so much. Let me explain.

Sure, maybe that person originally purchased my VRD pattern for $2 before posting it on Facebook, but that did not give them the right (legally or morally) to share it with over 3000 people for free. They did not ask my permission to post my copyrighted pattern instructions — I would NEVER have given my permission to post it on Facebook anyway.

Copyright laws are there to protect intellectual property for many good reasons, including a copyright owner’s ability to earn income on their own intellectual property.

I design quilt patterns as part of my livelihood. By posting the instructions of my pattern for free on the FB Group, that person so kindly helped me (and VRD) to lose potential income — possibly more than $6000 in pattern sales, if each of the 3000+ group members had purchased their own pattern at $2 per pattern.

This all makes me second guess my desire to design and publish new quilt patterns. If designers stopped creating new quilt patterns, new quilt books, and new quilt magazine patterns featuring new techniques, new fabric collections, new tools, and new ideas then the quilt world would suffer greatly. Eventually the sale of fabric, notions, tools, rulers, etc. would suffer, which would then hurt fabric companies, publishers, advertisers, quilt shops and other quilt-related businesses. People could lose their jobs and companies and businesses could eventually go out of business. Do you see the domino effect here? Ultimately, it would hurt you, the quilter, who just wants to make beautiful quilts.

Copyright law protects ALL of us.

I appreciate you taking the time to hear my latest copyright story. And now I’ll jump off my soapbox.

Time to check out the NEW May patterns!

NEW May 2024 VRD Rose Card Patterns

Yep, it’s the Thursday after the first Friday in May, which means — NEW PATTERNS!

There are 7 — count ’em — 7 NEW patterns this month — the set of 5 that you know and love along with a table runner and a snack mat. Definitely something for everyone in this month’s patterns.

YAY! Aren’t they Fab??? You can get the set of 5 physical patterns for the special price of $8.95 HERE

I’m sorry, but we don’t offer the set as a digital pattern collection. However, the good news is that each pattern is individually available as a digital format. You can find the patterns by name on our website, villarosadesigns.com.

Here’s a pretty flower runner, perfect to whip up for Mother’s Day or just for spring — I can see you already picking out your favorite colors and fabrics for this one. You can find the runner physical pattern HERE or the digital pattern HERE.

And here’s a very spring-y fun Snack Mat pattern. Don’t you just love pinwheels??? They are so fun and happy! You can find Pinwheelies the physical pattern HERE or the digital pattern HERE.

So, which one are YOU going to make first???

Well, I’m off to take my sweet and crazy little Shih Tzu, Bailly, out for a walk to enjoy this gorgeous day. Ta Ta!

Until next week —

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @VRD