The event was held at the Sofitel on Phillip Street here in Sydney on the 20th of the November. Tim came with me, he kept referring to it as a ’sympathy date’ but I think he was reasonably interested. Well anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, he has been living and breathing (and tripping over) Amy Butler products for just as long as I have.

As we were waiting for the doors to open, we had some lovely champagne and some nice little sate chicken kebab type things, little mini pizzas, spring rolls, dim sims and some other little things that I didn’t get to see. Here’s a photo of everyone ejoying the drinks:

The doors to the Sydney Room were opened and everyone filed in. Tim and I found two perfect seats together and we sat down. On everyone’s chair there were these little Amy Butler packs:

Inside the plastic bag we found:

2 window stickers (’Amy Butler products sold here’)
1 free pattern – Bed Bug Pillows
1 free pattern – The Swing Bag
And 1 postcard

So, soon enough Amy Butler is invited up onto the stage and a young girl from Living Creatively interviews her briefly before Amy begins her talk. Here is a photo of the interview:

And I just had to take a photo of the mirrored ceiling in this room. From where I was sitting there was a perfect reflection of Amy Butler and the interviewer:

Amy’s talk basically consisted of a Powerpoint presentation with various images (most if not all from her Midwest Modern book) and as she was going though the presentation she would explain what we were seeing.

She showed us images of her previous brands and incarnations. It may come as a surprise to many that she actually picked apples for a short time to help put food on the table. She did this in between the times when she would design greeting cards and gift wrap paper for Hallmark. She said she would receive $200 – $300 for a design. She also talked about the process of designing fabric patterns, where she gets her inspiration from (her garden) and getting the pattern from the computer to the printing mill and then the process of marketing the products at quilt shows and trade fairs etc. She took us through the process of creating a bag pattern, from the various testers and sewists that are involved in testing the pattern and making sure the instructions are all correct, and the process of taking photographs for the front of the pattern. She enlists all types of people for modeling the products in her patterns. One girl is her dentist’s assistant, another she found in a local store, and another is her best friend. She also showed us a photo of her team that works at her studio in Greenville Ohio.

When the presentation had finished Amy appeared at the back of the room pen in hand and ready for signing autographs and appearing in photos.
 

So I scrambled into the queue with my Amy Butler bag and Tim stood behind me holding the camera. In the queue I got talking to a lady – Robyn D, and I introduced myself as the owner of Tall Poppy Craft Products. Robyn seemed very surprised to meet me as the way she found out about this event was through reading the Tall Poppy Craft Products email newsletter. I couldn’t believe it! That’s now two people who only found out about a particular event through reading my email newsletter!

Anyway, eventually I got my turn with Amy and, well, here are the photos:

Tim said that I looked like a gospel of Jesus when I was with her She said she loved my bag and I was of course chuffed

She actually spent quite a bit of time with me. I mentioned to her that my company actually buys a lot of patterns from her studio and she seemed genuinely appreciative. I asked her how she manages to keep so level-headed and she paused for a moment and gave me quite a thoughtful answer – basically she said that every day she tries to be gracious and thankful of what she has and that you need to focus on the bigger picture and to be grateful for the people who help her run her business. She said that there are times when things are flustered (which I was so glad to hear her say, not in a spiteful kind of way but because its so good to know that she is a normal person!) but she tries not to sweat the small stuff. All this time she was signing my Midwest Modern book. Here is a picture of what she signed:

I really wanted to ask her to draw me a picture of a frog or a mushroom because on this page it reads:

“As a young girl I excelled at drawing mushrooms, frogs and flowers.”

But I didn’t have the courage to ask her!

She also signed my In Stitches book but I think Tim distracted her and she ended up writing ‘To Dear Robyn’ (which was the lady before me). She was so apologetic. She said she would arrange for another book to be sent from her studio to me and she would make it extra special. But in the meantime she crossed out ‘Robyn’ and wrote ‘But really its Miss Sarah!’. Here’s a photo:

In a funny way I’m glad that the super Amy Butler makes the same kind of silly mistakes that I make every day.

Tim said to Amy that I’ve been so excited about meeting her and that he’s never seen me so excited about anything. Then we parted ways and that was the night. We had pizza on the way home.