Thimblelady Forum

Dear Liuxin, I really enjoy your column in Quilters Companion and real your articles with great interest. I would like to challenge you with a few sensitive and touch questions and hear your thoughts on them. I have quilted for decades and am sensing a change in the quilting community. To be frank, I sense a loss of the sharing spirit. My friend did your applique class and cam back raving about the many new techniques she learned but refused to share them with me, instead, insisted I take your class. What is wrong with sharing between friends? At another class, the teacher insisted we buy a copy of Patricia Campbell’s Jacobeen applique book that she was going to teach in the class. I did your quilting class. You didn’t impose a copy of your book on everbody. Why do I have to buy a copy of the book when I have already paid for the class? I did a class recently and feel clearly the teacher is very reserved in sharing. Why? Lorna from NSW

Hi, Lorna, Thank you for writing to me. Aren’t you good at raising big issues?! They are surely sensitive and touchy. But thank you very much for raising them. It is time to have a closer look. Everything is changing. So is the quilting industry (yes, it is an industry now). Traditionally, quilting teachers naturally emerged from good quilters who learned mostly through their own quilt making and were gradually recognised by quilters around her by continuously making good quilts over the years.

In recent years, quiltmaking has been ever popular with one foot marching its way into a textile art form at an accelerated pace, while the other is deeply rooted as an enduring traditional craft. Quilters want to make better quilts and more quilts and this, aided by the revolution in information technology, has made learning easier, faster and yet cost-effective. It has also made teaching a profitable profession, possible for many without becoming expert quilters themselves. As a result, a new breed of teachers has come into being in large numbers, teaching other quilters’ works or inventions.

Now you have two kinds of teachers. On the surface, it is all sharing. But looking lcosely, you will note the difference: some teachers (inventors/manufacturers) share what they have found out through their own quilt making, while others (tradesmen/marketers) are sharing what the inventors have found out. There is nothing wrong with ‘sharing;. It is where the finance flows that is the issue. When a tradesman shares, he/she is profiting from sharing an inventive quilter’s invention for his/her own financial gain, while an inventive teacher is sharing her own invention for her own gain. Let’s have a closer look at the cases you mentioned.

Case #1: Your friend wouldn’t teach you what she had learned in my class and advised you to take my class. To me there is nothing wrong with sharing with a friend, particularly as a non-profitable act. By urging you to take my class, your friend was trying to make sure I am paid for sharing my appliqué secrets. This is what many quilters are doing at their initiative to protect and encourage those inventive teachers they love. You are so lucky to have this honest friend. I certainly am very grateful for her appreciation for sharing. Please give her a big hug for me. This is the kind of quilter every inventive teacher wants to share with! I can’t wait.

Case #2: Your teacher insisted you buy a copy of Patricia Campbell’s book for her class while I didn’t impose a copy on quilters in my class. The difference here is that your teach was sharing what she had learned from Patricia Campbell while I was teaching my own invention, where I have the right cut my own income without hurting anybody else for my students’ benefit as I wish. In this case, although you paid for the class, the teaching fee went to the tradesman teacher, while only part of the cost of the book went to Patricia, the inventive teacher from whom the tradesman teacher learned her own skills and on whose work she based her teaching. If your teacher allowed you not to buy Patricia’s book, she might look rather generous to you when she would have pocketed all your money for herself and left patricia and her publisher the losers. Do you see the point? I don’t have to sell a copy of my own book in my class should I so wish, but those who teaches what my inventions for their own profit must. This is the difference. I must say your teacher is honest and has done the right thing to protect the inventor. Appreciate her because many are profiting themselves at the expense of real inventors in the very name of SHARING…

Case #3: Your teacher is reserved in sharing. Hmmm, I don’t know the reason for this individual case. But I do know and feel for those inventive teachers who want to share but also have to protect themselves from those tradesmen teachers who scavenge around their classes to ‘source’ teaching ideas and materials. I have encountered teachers boasting about how they went around different classes to pick ideas and techniques to make up ‘their own’, so they don’t have to do the hard yard of work and boast that they don’t have to acknowledge the inventors. There are tradesman teachers teaching designs when they can’t even draw. Some entre a quilt into competition as her own when it has more than significant input from her teacher. These problems will hurt the quality sharing by inventive teachers as well as honest tradesman teachers, ultimately all honest quilters. Copyright law is not the only law that can protect inventive quilting teachers. Look inot trademark law and the Trade Practices Act (or Trade Secrets Act in US) when you have something good to share! Get good professional help. Techniques, classes and services can all be protected by law. However, while I am lucky to have myself covered, I understand a good proportion of teachers either don’t have the knowledge or can’t afford decent legal professional help. That is, their inventions are not potentially profitable enough to cover the legal expenses to protect them from the prying eyes of a small minority of tradesman teachers whose ethical standard is ‘how not to be caught’. Unless this is changed, we’ll only see fewer willing to share.

But, can this be changed? Can an everyday quilter make a difference? Absolutely! In fact, we have a common interest in protecting the inventors – whether you are an inventor, a tradesman teacher, a quilting business owner, a quilt guild member or simply an everyday quilter.

Every author knows what an effort, both financially and emotionally, it costs to write a book. Every publisher or retailer knows what a financial undertaking it is to get a book from printing to delivery. It takes a big heart to share when everyone knows the potential risk of being ripped off by sharing their knowledge. It is not uncommon for authors not benefit at all from publishing their work. If you truly value sharing, you can buy a book you need instead of stuffing another 2 pieces of fabrics you won’t use into your already cluttered wardrobe. No quilter is too poor to buy the knowledge she needs.

Every tradesman teacher should make it a pleasure and obligation to acknowledge their teaching source and explain to their class why they need to purchase a copy of the original book / pattern. If you take the lead to appreciate your own teachers who have shared everything with you, you are protecting your own source of sharing. A wise English saying is ‘never bite the hand that feeds you’.

Every shop owner and teaching conference organiser should set standards of teaching and put teachers with original ideas and techniques first. This is exactly what the most reputable international quilting event Organisers are doing. Quilts Inc, which organises the international Quilt Festival, won’t take teachers teaching other’s inventions without the inventor’s written permission. Remember, when good people do nothing, bad things happen.

The ultimate responsibility to keep the sharing spirit up lies in the hands of everyday quilters. If you refuse to attend a class run by teachers who profit from another’s invention, without paying their fair due (no matter how cheap they offer it), you can bet there will be less cheaters around you, but more inventors inventing and more honest and good teachers sharing!

My simple logic is if we run out of inventors, there will be nothing to share.

-The end.
First published on Australian Quilters Companion Issue #29

My questions to you: In the face of commercial greed, what would be the best way, or is there any way at all, that I, or other teachers, can share effectively and thoroughly with you? This problem is felt by me and many others all the more in the current situation. My applique book sales are so down that have hurt me financially big time. I had never thought this was a risk - all I was thinking during the writing was how to make my instructions so clearly that quilters will be able to learn by themselves! I am disappointed that my effort and hope to share my skills and inventions through my applique book turned out like this. Looking at the pile of books in storage, I can’t help asking myself should I have shared? But if I didn’t, could I have won the praise of so many of the honest quilters?! This is our problem. Can you think up a way we can share without being exploited?