Inspiration: Amy Butler

Ah, what a beautiful summery day - and what better way to depict this than with the wonderfully summery Amy Butler fabrics. The colours... well just take a look! Anything Amy Butler makes me want to skip & laugh and clutch a handful of those delicious fabrics to my bosom whilst spinning around on a mountain top a la Maria von Trapp. In fact many of her designs do remind me of the curtain fabric Maria used to make clothes for the von Trapp children in The Sound of Music - but in a super good way of course!

I first stumbled across her fabrics at The Sewing for Pleasure exhibition a couple of years ago (it could have been The Knitting & Stitching Show, I forget now). I was choosing a very cute piece of fabric with cool Japanese-style baa-lambs on for a -never started- project for my then unborn niece. There was a multi buy deal on that stand (yep I'm a sucker for them!) and so in order to make up the quantity I found myself drawn towards these amazingly graphic florals in eye popping colour combinations.

It was a little bit of a fabric epiphany - all of a sudden my eyes were open to the magical world of Amy Butler fabrics! And what a world of colour & pattern it is. She & her husband David have run the successful fabric design studio Art of the Midwest in Ohio for many years and regularly contributed articles in Country Living magazine, as well as co-authoring several design style books.

But aside from the talent that makes the fabric collections such a global success & the good-enough-to-eat photos, I think that it is the lifestyle they portray that has me so hooked. Through their images it looks to me that in Amy Butler Land there is never a dull grey day, never a cross word & never a reason not to be totally surrounded by drop-dead-gorgeous fabrics (ok, so that last one might not appeal to everyone... but stay with me here!) I guess what I'm getting at is that Amy Butler fabrics make me feel happy & positive. They also make me want to spend an awful lot of money & do an awful lot of sewing!

To see what I mean check out this video from their recent photo-shoot. I love behind the scenes peeks of other creatives at work and it is so much fun to work on a project like this

So are you hooked yet? Can you feel the happiness? And what's more, Amy is generous too... there are tons of FREE project sheets to download on her website. I went a little crazy on there yesterday. And it felt good!

Looks like I'll find a use for that fabric afterall x

{ all images by David Butler at Amy Butler}