I have inherited dozens of crafting books from family, some nearly 100 years old. I was looking through some of these the other day and thinking about working my way through some of the patterns and scanning them for use on my blog. I would assume the patterns from the 20's and 30's would be in the public domain by now. But what about some of the knitting or embroidery patterns for the 80's or 90's? Normally I would show the finished project with a link to where the pattern could be purchased, but all of these books are out of print. And who am I to deprive the world of zebra sweaters?

So what do you think the best way to approach this would be?
Re: Craft blogging ethics question
When you say scanning the pattern do you mean the photo or directions? First for the 90s ones, I think scanning the photo is fine as long as you source it - name of book, author, publisher, date etc. I would not scan the directions - if someone really loves the pattern I am sure they can find a used copy of it somewhere.
For the ones from the 20's and 30's, I don't know enough about copyright law to say how long it lasts. This is a .gov site on copyright law. For works published before 1978 (when copyright law started?) it is a little more complicated it seems.
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
You are free to republish anything in the public domain, and you /ought/ to cite appropriately to prevent any confusion on authorship.
For potentially copyrighted works, you're free to put images/directions (effectively the same as quoting) on your blog, but you /need/ to cite their source (e.g. Knitter's Monthly, May 1975).
Actually, it IS public domain; it just doesn't negate authorship.
Thank you for the correction.
Thank you for the correction.