Ancient Friend

When I was a new mom back in 1996, we were living in Rochester, NY, on one income of roughly $900 per month. We had  set up our life so that when I got pregnant, I could quit my job and be a stay at home mom. And that’s exactly what we did.

Hence, no money for diapers or formula! No worries – my mom breastfed her babies and always used cloth diapers…AND stayed at home with us!

So off I went to a local department store and bought a package of Gerber prefolds, diaper pins, and rubber pants. I set up a diaper pail with some bleach and water, following everything I learned from my mom. The only difference was – my mom had a washer and dryer. I was usually washing by hand and drying on a rack.

After doing this for several weeks, I had constant leaks, and my baby had a diaper rash. That’s when I started to think for myself.

I went back to the department store and bought a package of Gerber flats. They are essentially a large piece of cotton birdseye fabric, which can be folded many different ways. They allow you to fit the diaper to any size baby.

The flats worked better than the prefolds. Now I needed more diapers, and money was tight.

As a sewist from the tender age of 8 (again, my mom’s influence), I decided to make some more prefolds. I knew I wanted cotton, so I bought flannel. I ripped open a prefold to see what was used inside.

To my utter disgust, what I found inside angered me.

To my utter disgust, what I found inside angered me. It was polyester batting! Nothing about that made sense. Polyester is not absorbent whatsoever. THIS is the reason my daughter’s diapers were leaking!

(Disclaimer: Gerber Prefolds are now made with 100% cotton.)

Fast forward…

Three years later, I was pregnant with my third child, and I had a toddler who was potty training. We now had internet in our home, and my husband was a computer technician. We could afford disposable diapers, but I’m an idealist. I still was looking for solutions for heat, diaper rash, and nighttime leaks.

I had stopped soaking dirty diapers in a bleach solution. My diapers weren’t lasting very long, and my kids still had diaper rashes at times. So I was washing more often. We had laundry facilities at our new  apartment though.

After creating patterns for fitted diapers, I finally found the wool solution for diaper covers. I had still been using the dreaded “rubber pants”!

Amity’s World, a forum for “crunchy” moms

I had found an incredible resource for young moms – Amity’s World, a forum for “crunchy” moms, which later became Amitymama.com. It was a community for “attachment parenting”, an invaluable resource for me and lots of other moms. I learned about wool there.

I started by buying 1 handknit wool soaker. I didn’t know how to knit at the time. Then I bought my first wool diaper cover. I don’t remember the brand, but both the cover and the soaker worked well.

Now I needed to find wool to buy, so I could sew my own. I made a trip to the thrift store. I found some 100% wool shirts, which I cut up and made covers. It was pretty scratchy, so I looked online for wool fabric.

Success! I had finally found the solutions to my cloth diapering problems! I worked on my patterns, developing toddler patterns, and testing everything on my kids as well as getting testers from AmityMama.

By now I was creating websites using html. I decided to sell my diapers online, and my first business name was “Handmaid Diapers”. It was 2000. I used PayPal buttons to accept payments.

Speaking of buttons, I used buttons as a closure on my first diaper covers. Then I started using Velcro, then Aplix (hook & loop) and metal snaps before finally purchasing a snap press in 2001.

I eventually started a Yahoo group to buy hemp, wool jersey, snaps, and other notions. I bought rolls and rolls of fabric and added hemp/cotton fitteds and AIO’s (all-in-ones) to my product line. I changed my business name to my fourth child’s nickname in 2001.

I sold my diapers wholesale to several shop owners and started a website called “Seasons Originals” where 15 WAHM’s sold our wares. A WAHM is a work-at-home-mom. 😁

Drama and Threats

In the early 2000’s, the WAHMs were everywhere. Moms were sewing and promoting their businesses and making money for their families. It’s wonderful to operate a small home business. Not only does it teach so many skills, but it’s also extremely satisfying to be able to be home with your children and create products that other parents want to use.

There was a lot of competition. Somehow I think some people thought it was a big money maker, and they started fighting like dogs over scraps. (I’m not calling them bitches.) Then lawsuits started when companies claimed to have invented certain designs (like pocket diapers).

WAHM’s were getting scared because who has money lying around for attorney fees? Scammers started showing up who conned us into investing our hard-earned money into joint eCommerce sites that never materialized. We even had our children’s cloth diaper pictures show up on strange p–n sites. Ick! So we stopped posting pictures of our kids.

I personally also had drama. I had stopped sewing in an effort to work on my marriage. After realizing that my marriage had become abusive, I left my husband and became a single working mom. It was the most stressful time in my life.

In 20018, my first grandson was born. Of course, it took me back to when my kids were babies, and I pulled out my sewing machine again!

I started my business back up under the name Prism Handcrafts on Etsy. I had learned to knit and thought I would do more crafty things, but my diaper covers took off! I started a website called Ancient Friend, which is the meaning of my name, by the way, and now my Etsy shop is Ancient Friend Shop. ❤️

So that’s my story.

And it’s not over.