Copyright Infringement Update

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words and encouragement...it really helped lessen the blow.
Things have been worked out between the other person and myself. They aquired the pattern from someone at a gathering and had no idea mine even existed. One look for herself though, and she was pretty sure that her gathering friend copied the pattern from me.
She has since removed offending items, and was very kind and accomidating about the whole situation. I'm glad that it worked out.
I don't know exactly what I can do to protect myself in the future...you want a photo to represent detail, and I can't zoom in too close and detailed without giving away the pattern, essentially.
Oui.

It's happened!

I've officially had a design ripped off, beaded poorly, with prices undercut.
Highest form of flattery?
Still sucks.
I've asked them to take the offending items out of their shop and informed them that they need to actually ASK permission before taking someone elses design and making a profit with it. Lets see if they at least credit the designer. Right now they are claiming that each one of their designs is "unique and original".
Yeah. Ok.
Unfortunately I relisted my item recently, so at first glance it looks like I copied them. However I'm fairly sure etsy has records of when I first put the item on there, early this year. If it really comes down to it, I've had my design loaded on various networking/beady sites for quite some time now.
I had a feeling I would have to deal with this one day...all the beaders talk about it. I feel sick to my stomach about it.

edited to add: Ok the beadwork they did actually isn't bad...and on closer inspection they changed a couple beads but..still