Just Wanna Copyright for Makers: Common Quilting Blocks

Welcome to Blog Post #4 of the blog series Just Wanna Copyright for Makers highlights concepts from the recently released book and accompanying exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum. For more about the steps in the common quilting blocks and other aspects of copyright, purchase a copy of the book!

 

Common blocks are not protected by copyright. We all use them. They are part of our common creative pool. Let’s dive in! 

Throughout our quilt history, there have been women who documented and gathered the quilting blocks being used by quilters, one of the most famous efforts being the work of Barbara Brackman in the 1960s and 1970s. Her Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns is not only a classic but also key to how we define and identify quilt blocks with the Brackman numbering system. In fact, what drew copyright expert Elizabeth Townsend Gard initially to the quilting and copyright project from the beginning was the rich pool of public domain common blocks. Here was a field where the entire community engaged in using a defined common pool of materials.

In 2018, as part of the initial research, we put out a call to the members of the Just Wanna Quilt project to send in common blocks, using the Just Wanna Quilt colors - blue, green, pink, and orange. And they knew what we were talking about. These are 8 of the over 100 blocks sent, which are on display at the New England Quilt Museum. Do you know the names of each block? 

 

But further questions arise. What is a block? How can we define one? It usually is of a particular size -- 6, 8, 12, 15, 18, or 36 inches square. It can be repeated in the quilt, or stand with others of different designs. Tracing quilt blocks back has been a hobby for many since its beginnings. And it seems like everyone understands that this is a pool of “natural resources.” No one has a lock on a bear paw or log cabin. These are common shapes and patterns shared amongst a quilting community.

A Little Bit of (Common Quilt Block) History

In 1915, Marie Webster wrote Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them, which came out of her stories from Ladies’ Home Journal. Others followed.

Ruby McKim, 101 Patchwork Patterns: Ruby McKim self-published 101 Patchwork Patterns in 1931. She was not the first to compile a book of well-known repeating blocks, but hers is one of the key sources, even today. She worked for the Kansas City Star, where she wrote a column that included patterns and had a pattern business with her husband. Together they founded McKim Studios. She identified these blocks as part of a quilting tradition.

McKim believed she was gathering blocks from history. She was telling the story of the past. She wasn’t claiming copyright on the individual blocks – the book (the selection, arrangement, and coordination), likely. But only for the first 28 years. After 1959, the book was in the public domain (because the McKims did not renew it with the U.S. Copyright Office). One of the things we love about this book is her commentary on various aspects of quilting that are sprinkled throughout the book. About cutting, she writes, “This is conceded to be the least interesting and most tedious part of quilt making; however, it is certainly not a step that can be hurried as blocks must be cut exactly.” (33). While methods of cutting have dramatically changed, that sentiment has not.

There were others besides McKim, including Nancy Cabot at the Chicago Tribune, Prudence Penny at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Edna Maria Dunn who took over at Kansas City Star, and so many others. Brackman, along with Joyce Gross and Cuesta Benberry had tallied 244 pattern columns during the 1930s. (6) Ruth Finley published Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them in 1929. Carrie Hall and Rose Kretsinger wrote The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America in 1935. All of these authors were documenting blocks. All were not concerned with copyright ownership of the individual blocks. They saw these blocks, from the beginning, as a common pool that had been available. It’s fascinating, really.

 

Carrie Hall (b. 1866) in 1933 wrote a foreword to this book where she explained the quilting found its groove after World War I, when knitting socks for soldiers was no longer necessary. “I found my fingers itching for some ‘pick-up’ work, so I turned to quilt-making, which had always interested me from the time when on my seventh birthday my pioneer mother cut the patches for a star quilt that under watchful guidance proved a masterpiece that was a nine-day wonder in the neighborhood.” (7) She made some quilts, but then her attention turned to “making a collection of patches, one like every known pattern, little realizing the magnitude of the undertaking.” (7) Her collection, as of 1933, including over 1000 patches, which she had “placed” at the Thayer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt is the book form of her journey. In the forward, she includes women who came before her:

• Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them, by Ruth Finlay
• Quilts, Their Stories and How to Make Them by Marie D. Webster
• Old Fashioned Quilts by Carlie Sexton
• And newspapers: The Kansas City Star, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Prudence Penny,
• Grandmother Clark’s Old Fashioned Quilt Designs
• The McKim Studios
• The Woman’s Home Companion
• The Ladies' Home Journal
• The Modern Priscilla
• The Household Magazine
• The Royal Neighbor
• The Ladies Art Co.
• Mountain Mist Quilting Cotton

Hall has indexed and retold the story from these sources. She explains: “In making the collection I found that nearly all of the better-known designs were included in every commercialized group offered for sale.” (8)

Nancy Cabot, a pseudonym for Loretta Leitner Rising, wrote a daily newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, beginning on January 20, 1933. Each day she featured a quilt block, and then included, for sale, the pattern for 5 cents in stamps or coins, to be mailed to the Sunday Tribune. She is credited with designing over 200 quilt blocks. The Tribune had a service library for hobbyists, and the Nancy Cabot Quilt pamphlets were among them Loretta was born in 1906, and worked at the paper for 32 years, being promoted to Needlework Editor in the 1930s. The quilting patterns ran from 1933-1948.

Cabot is kind of a quilt cult figure. There was a Nancy Cabot Sew-along online that listed each pattern by the month included in the Chicago Tribune. In 2012, a Flickr group started to pattern some of Nancy Cabot’s blocks and share them. For example, Lee Heinrich of Freshly Pieced suggested directions on how she would create the Mosaic Block by Nancy Cabot. And there were over 200 people in the group all working on and sharing their version of Nancy Cabot blocks. The blocks themselves were presumed to be in the common public domain pool. And they were honoring Nancy Cabot in creating this group. Their versions -- the directions, the quilts they make, the website -- are potentially protectable. But the recreation of the individual blocks is not.

Enter onto the stage Barbara Brackman. As Brackman tells the story (in her book, elsewhere, and even on our Just Wanna Quilt podcast), she began the encyclopedia as indexed published pattern names. Brackman identifies Grandmother’s Flower Garden as the oldest she could find, dating to 1835 in Godey’s Lady’s Book. Then, she explains decades went by before the repeating block became a standard. “As magazines increased in the United States and technology for illustration improved, references to quilts also increased.” (5).

 

Brackman began indexing quilt blocks in the late 1960s. She included the work of her predecessors above and also searched local newspapers and other resources as she traveled for work. Her focus was primarily on works between 1890 and 1940. This became the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns which includes over 4000 hand-drawn and cataloged patterns. She created the Brackman number system, which is standard today. 

Brackman’s work is protected by copyright. Her Encyclopedia—the selection, arrangement, and coordination. Not the system. Not the blocks themselves. Her work has been incorporated into Electric Quilt software, including Blockbase, likely through a licensing deal. And she has used her blocks for her books, like The Kansas City Star Quilt Sampler.

 

Think today of similar books like Quick and Easy Block Builder by Catherine Dreiss; Dresden Quilt Blocks Reimagined (one Elizabeth especially loves) by Candyce Grisham; Barbara Brackman’s The Kansas City Star Quilt Sampler; Lisa Walton’s Beautiful Building Block Quilts, and the Quilt Builder Card Deck. All of these are possible because common blocks are in the public domain, the common pool of creativity. Each of the individual publications, however, is protectable by copyright! That’s how copyright works. You can have many books about common blocks, and the books themselves are protectable, but that doesn’t lock up the blocks so that others can create and make their own quilts and even books!

 

Take Away: Common Blocks

 

Aggressively use the common blocks in the public domain. Enjoy, share, love. And do not freak out if someone else also makes a Glorious Nine Patch or Log Cabin. That is the whole point of the system. That we all play and enjoy. (That is different from pirating copies of your patterns, or not paying for the pattern for a class, of course.) 

 

But the selection, arrangement, and coordination of the blocks may be protectable if there is a medium of creativity -- more than basic sashing or repeating the blocks. Take, for example, the beautiful quilt by Marianne Fons, Lady Liberty, which is also part of the Just Wanna Quilt for Makers exhibit. Here she takes common blocks, applique, and other elements to create this beautiful work. Now, this has a copyright. Does that make sense? We will be going deeper into Marianne’s work as well as other quilts in the show in subsequent blog posts. But for now, enjoy a little quilt history, and remember: common quilt blocks are part of our creative common pool. And we all can do marvelous things with them.

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Elizabeth Townsend Gard is the John E. Koerner Endowed Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School and an avid quilter since childhood. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural History from UCLA and has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court for her work on copyright. Elizabeth is the lead author of the series. Elizabeth focuses on the legal expertise of the book.

Sidne K. Gard is a Distinguished Scholar Scholarship student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an Entertainment Editor at F Newsmagazine. Sidne focuses on translating legal concepts to artists and crafters. Sidne is the Managing Editor and Design Director for the Just Wanna Trademark for Makers series.

Elizabeth and Sidne started Just Wanna Quilt, which has also expanded to crafts and art. Listen to the podcast and learn more at justwannaquilt.com.