PA: Artsty Earth Mamas???

(Photo by Jakob Bailey)

We're not religious environmentalists, but we have always seen the wisdom in being thrifty and recycling or reusing items that have served their purpose but still have much life.  We have made our own canvases, created sculptures out of 'junk', picked through our husbands' scrap lumber, and made new clothes out of old.  We have passed baby clothes back and forth between ourselves and our sisters, traded clothing with each other, frequented thrift shops and lusted over vintage clothing.   As I have mentioned before, we thought it might be pleasantly challenging to design and create clothing for our little ones and avoid the overflowing drawers of generic, mundane clothing with which we covered our older children... and depleted our finances.
I've been working on putting together a complete diaper package for Anyka and after much research am seeing that part of being thrifty and efficient is admitting that sometimes it IS cheaper to buy new...  Cloth diapers are quite an investment, and the better the quality the bigger the investment.  Some things are very easy to make and lend themselves to recycled material... doublers or inserts, wool diaper covers.  Probably I could recycle enough t-shirts and flannel sheets and cotton to make the actual diapers but prefolds aren't really that expensive to buy new.  I am thinking I am going to convert some prefolds into contoured diapers and then sew homemade doublers into them for extra absorbency.  Here is a picture of some of my doublers waiting to be sewn into their new homes...