Recent things :)

Today, my son got some vaccinations (read: fussy baby) so there was a bit less sewing time. But I did sew two blocks for the Do.Good stitches bee. I wasn't too excited about doing these blocks, since they are really different from my normal tastes. That's part of the point of joining a bee - you practice things you normally wouldn't! But the colors were really out my norm: "colors are pinks and oranges with a touch of brown. linen, whites, off whites, and creams are also welcome". Hrrm. I don't do a lot with orange, and I especially don't care for it touching pink, and I didn't really know how to incorporate the other colors in there....so I just waited. I waited and waited to see what other people's blocks looked like.

My first block:

I ended up deciding that I preferred the blocks with less brown. So I threw the dark brown fabric I pulled out back into my stash. I dug through my scraps and found some oranges from the Swoon quilt, and there was no shortage of pinks. I think they turned out well enough (much better than I was expecting!), but I will be retiring this combo of fabrics for now.

And now, I just thought I would mention a few interesting things going on around blogland these days :)

I've really been enjoying the Sew Inspiring Room series put on by Amber at A Little Bit Biased. She posts pictures of all sorts of peoples sewing rooms and boy, are there some really gorgeous ones!! And mine is not, so I enjoy looking at them. This week, she is showing a great room transformation.

Angela at Cut to Pieces won the Moda Sliced competition. I loved her entries, especially the inspiration board! Check out her blog if you don't know it yet :)

In other blogland news, there's been a bit of copyright dispute lately...Basically, the recent book Scrap Republic came out and C&T Publishing printed a picture of one of the quilts in the book on tote bags. I guess this is a routine way for them to promote their books. Well, the quilt was made with fabric from one of Kate Spain's lines. Moda sent it to the author, encouraging her to use it. Well, the designer was not so thrilled about the picture being printed on the totes without her permission/licensing agreement, and legal action was threatened. You can read C&T's comments here, the author's comments here, and Kate's comments here. I found it really thought provoking. The post on C&T asks this:

"Who is the copyright holder of an original quilt design? Is it the person who designs the quilt, or the person(s) who design the fabrics used in the quilt? Is it a percentage of both? Does the photographer who takes a photo of a quilt own the copyright to the photograph? Copyright is rarely ever 'clear cut' and I am certain attorneys on both sides of the issue could argue effective cases."

When I first started reading about the whole situation, I totally thought the designer was in the right - those were her copyrighted fabrics and designs, fair and square.  But the more I thought about it, the more I changed my mind. It was a photograph of a quilt - the purpose wasn't to reprint the designs on the fabric without paying her, but to showcase a quilt that was in their book. If they had the copyright to show the quilt in their book, didn't they have the right to show it on the bag? But because that logic may have been troublesome, Kate's lawyers asked that all copies of the book be destroyed. Which seems extreme - when I buy fabric, nowhere on the selvedge does it state that is only intended for private use. If it couldn't be shown in the book, does that mean that we shouldn't be able to sell quilts made with that fabric because we would be making money off of it? Because that doesn't seem right at all.

So to answer the above questions, I think the quilt design is owned by the person who designed the quilt. Let me demonstrate my point. The Swoon pattern is a specific quilt design. It has been made in many, many different fabrics, but is still easily recognizable as the Swoon quilt. Even if the designer had made the original quilt in different fabric, it would still be the Swoon quilt. However, if that original fabric was used to create a quilt with a different pattern, it would not be the Swoon quilt, but an entirely different quilt. So it seems to me that the true identity (and therefore copyright of the quilt) is dependent on the pattern and pattern designer rather than the fabric designer.

You might argue that a quilt is dependent and defined by the fabrics used. Take my fire quilt - you need some pretty specific fabrics to make it work. However, I could switch out some fabrics for solids in other brands. Or I could use tone on tone fabrics to create the same effect with a slightly different feel. Get my drift? The fabric is crucial for the pattern to work effectively, but it is not the identity of the quilt.

Anyway. Those are my thoughts. If anyone read through all of that, I'd be interesting in hearing your take!