Copyright infringement is illegal. You know that and I don’t think any of you would dream of scanning pages and patterns from a book and posting them online. Even if it is  to your friends in a closed online group (something I found out was happening recently). But you know what? There are people who do that!

Every now and then someone lets me know when this sort of thing happens and I really do appreciate it. However, the truth is that it’s very difficult to fight online sharing.

Even though you know why, let me take a moment to explain why it is that you need to pay for your own copy of whatever pattern or book you want to work from:

If you want there to be a supply of new quilt patterns and books with well-written instructions, you need to support the authors and designers that who write them. Writing instructions, calculating yardage and precise cutting instructions, making the quilts and projects, all take a great deal of time and effort. I am not doing any of this for fun. If I want to make a quilt for fun, I just make it and to heck with all of that writing and calculating.

Plus, when you buy a book or pattern, it’s not just the authors you are supporting, but the publishers too. because i It is the rare author that who can produce an error-free, print-ready manuscript and pattern.

So, please, when you run across sharing that you suspect is wrong, consider nicely mentioning to the person or persons involved that you prefer to support the author rather than saving a little bit of money. Thank you so much :-).