Quilts in and of themselves can not be copyrighted. They are "useful" items. A “useful article” is an object having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. Examples are clothing, furniture, machinery, dinnerware, and lighting fixtures. An article that is normally part of a useful article may itself be a useful article, for example, an ornamental wheel cover on a vehicle.
Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian aspects of such works of craftsmanship. It may, however, protect any pictorial, graphic, or sculptural authorship that can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of an object. Thus, a useful article may have both copyrightable and uncopyrightable features. For example, a carving on the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair or flatware itself could not.
Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design.
If you take a picture of something, the picture you take is YOURs, you own the copyright to that picture.
On the US Copyright website, they even state in their FAQs, that Copyright protects the ORIGINAL photograph, NOT THE SUBJECT of the photograph.
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html#elvis
Also in the Copyright law Title 17 Chapter 1 §113(c), specifically states "In the case of a work lawfully reproduced in useful articles that have been offered for sale, or other distribution to the public, copyright does not include any right to prevent the making, distribution or display of pictures of photographs of such articles in connection with advertisements or commentaries related to the distribution or display of such articles, or in connection with news reports.
So if you make a quilt from a legally purchased pattern, that the copyright holder has sold to you, you have the right to take a picture of YOUR quilt, and post that picture on your blog.
If you go to a quilt show and they allow photographs to be taken, and take pictures of some of the quilts, and you want to post a picture YOU TOOK, on your blog, of a quilt YOU HAD PERMISSION TO PHOTOGRAPH, then you don't need permission of the quilt maker. In effect, by putting their quilt in a show that allows photographs, they have given you permission to take that photograph, and since it is YOUR photograph, they can not tell you what you can or can not do with that photograph.
The fact that a magazine prints information about copyright, but doesn't seem to research what they are printing doesn't make it the law. Again, I beleive that articles like the one in McCalls, is giving the information they WANT people to beleive, not the true facts of the law. Because they think most people will read it in a magazine and say to themselves, "it was printed in a magazine, they wouldn't put something in there if it weren't true". When in fact, what they printed isn't what the copyright law states. The best protection is to research for yourself what copyright laws cover and what they don't. Most people want to control every aspect of their patterns, and what is done with them, but the copyright laws don't give them that control.
