Want to listen to this post? Check out my free substack linked here
Here's What It Taught Me About Creativity, Business, and Starting Again.
This is a long one, so I hope you can stick with me. There are some chapters of running a business that you don't fully understand until you're far enough away from them to look back with a little more perspective.
For me, one of those chapters began nearly four years ago, when Sweet As April was at the height of its popularity and I started seeing bonnets that looked remarkably like mine.
I have thought about writing this story many times. I've started it in my head on walks, while painting, and during those quiet moments when you're reflecting on how much your life has changed. But I never quite knew how to tell it.
I don't want to name names or reopen old wounds. That's not what this is about. I also don't want to pretend the experience didn't hurt, because it did.
Instead, I want to share what happened, what it changed for me, and how something that once made me question the future of my business eventually helped me discover a much bigger creative life.
When Sweet As April was everything
When I started Sweet As April, I was making baby bonnets for my oldest daughter using vintage, upcycled, and donated fabrics. What began as a little creative project grew into a business serving thousands of families.
I loved finding beautiful textiles and imagining what they could become. I was especially drawn to vintage florals and the nostalgic quilting cottons that reminded me of the fabrics I had grown up seeing. I loved the idea that something that might otherwise be overlooked could become a treasured piece for someone's child.
Over time, Sweet As April became much more than a small sewing business.
At its peak, I was making bonnets full-time. The business supported our family, my husband stayed home with our children, and I employed four people. I had built a community around my work, and I was proud of what we'd created together.
This was also a deeply personal season of my life. Sweet As April had been a lifeline through the pandemic and during our journey of trying to conceive. It gave me something meaningful to work toward during times when other parts of life felt uncertain.
I had put years of work into this business. I knew its customers, its rhythms, its challenges, and its joys. I loved the work itself, but I also loved what it made possible for our family.
I had every reason to believe I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
The part nobody prepares you for
Then I started noticing bonnets that looked remarkably similar to mine.
I believed my designs had been copied. I have a receipt of an individual who purchased my bonnets and I suspected that they purchased them with the intent to take them apart so their construction could be replicated. It was a difficult thing to process, especially when I had worked so hard to develop the products, build the business, and create a recognizable style.
But the hardest moments weren't necessarily the ones spent looking at similar products.
They were the conversations I had to have with brands I knew and loved.
There were occasions when a brand would share a photograph of a bonnet and tag Sweet As April, believing it was one of mine. I had to reach out and explain that the bonnet pictured wasn't actually my work.
I appreciated that these brands wanted to support me. I knew their intentions were good. But I also had to correct the record, and those conversations were incredibly awkward.
Imagine being grateful that someone wants to celebrate your work while simultaneously having to explain that the work they're celebrating isn't yours.
It was uncomfortable, and it made me feel vulnerable in a way I hadn't anticipated.
The situation also created tension within the community I had spent years building. People had opinions. Relationships became complicated. There were moments I didn't handle perfectly, because I was hurt and trying to protect something that mattered enormously to me.
I'm not proud of every reaction I had during that time, but I can understand the person I was then. I was trying to hold together a business, a livelihood, and a part of my identity that suddenly felt less secure.
It took a toll on my mental health.
I wanted to keep making bonnets. I wanted to keep creating. I wanted to enjoy the work that had brought me so much happiness, without constantly wondering whether something I had made would be replicated or mistaken for someone else's product.
What I was really trying to protect
I've always understood that I wasn't the first person to make baby bonnets. Bonnets have existed for generations, and no one owns the idea of a bonnet.
What mattered to me was the particular creative world I had built around them: the way I approached vintage textiles, the fabrics I chose, the combinations I made, and the relationship I had with the customers who followed along.
I had helped grow a little corner of the internet where people were excited about upcycled baby bonnets, nostalgic florals, and fabrics that felt like they had a story to tell.
I wasn't just making something to sell. I was building something I cared deeply about.
When similar products began appearing, it felt as though the work I had put into developing that world was suddenly much harder to distinguish.
I tried to keep my head down and focus on what I could control. I told myself that if someone could reproduce a product, they still couldn't reproduce my relationship with the work, my reasons for doing it, or the years of experience behind it.
I also believed that the passion required to build a lasting business couldn't be borrowed from someone else's success.
Eventually, the drama settled. The community shifted, the viral moments faded, and sales changed.
Sweet As April had to change, too.
And while I was grateful for everything the business had given me, I had to ask myself what came next.
The conversation that stayed with me
Recently, I was talking with my mom about that season of my life. We began discussing the way small creative businesses are being copied today, including the growing concerns around AI and the ease with which original work can be imitated.
During that conversation, she made an observation that stayed with me.
She pointed out that, while my talent and the business I had built were real, anyone can find a beautiful floral tablecloth or an existing textile and turn it into a bonnet.
She wasn't diminishing my work. She was pointing out something I already knew, but hadn't fully allowed myself to sit with.
The fabric was part of the magic, but it wasn't the entirety of my talent.
My ability to recognize a beautiful textile, imagine what it could become, and transform it into something special was real. But so was my ability to create something from the beginning.
I had studied art history, fine art, and graphic design. I had spent years painting and developing my eye. I had been making art long before Sweet As April became what it was.
Somewhere along the way, I had started to think of myself primarily as a bonnet maker.
I loved that identity, and I still do. But it was a smaller description of who I was and I started to realize that.
The pivot I didn't know I needed
In 2024, I began making a more intentional shift in my creative work.
I started painting again. I began developing my own surface patterns, using my artwork to create original designs for fabric and wallpaper.
It felt different from finding a beautiful textile and turning it into a bonnet. This time, I was starting with an idea, a paintbrush, and a blank page.
I could paint the florals I loved. I could experiment with color and texture. I could create a pattern that felt like my own interpretation of the world around me, then bring that design to life on fabric.
I was no longer only choosing from the textiles that already existed. I was creating textiles that didn't exist until I made them.
That distinction mattered more than I expected.
It gave me a renewed sense of ownership over my creative work. It reminded me that I had spent years developing skills that extended far beyond sewing. And it opened up possibilities I hadn't fully explored while my attention was focused on keeping up with bonnet orders.
I began to see Sweet As April not as something I needed to protect by keeping it exactly the same, but as a brand that could grow with me.
I also began developing Bloom by April, a place for my artwork, digital products, and creative education. I could share what I was learning, explore new ways to make my art available, and help other creatives discover the possibilities of combining traditional and digital techniques.
None of this happened overnight, and I still have plenty to learn. But the direction feels right.
I'm giving myself room to be a bonnet maker, painter, surface pattern designer, and teacher without feeling that one part of my creative life has to diminish the other.
Creativity isn't a single product
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that the product people know you for doesn't have to be the only thing you're capable of making.
It's easy to become so closely associated with one product, one style, or one successful season that you begin to believe you have to keep reproducing that version of yourself. I used to say "do one thing and do it well" but now I see that you can do one thing, do it well, but also let it branch out into other areas of your life
But creativity is not linear.
Sometimes you spend months sewing. Sometimes you're painting every day. Sometimes you want to experiment with digital art, develop a new pattern collection, or learn a technique that has nothing to do with what you were making last year.
For a long time, I thought I needed to find a way to be more consistent in the things I produced. I've come to understand that consistency doesn't necessarily mean making the same thing forever.
For me, it means staying connected to the curiosity that led me to create in the first place.
That curiosity is what brought me to bonnets. It's what brought me back to painting. And it's what continues to lead me toward new ways of sharing my work.
I'm still learning how to build a business that leaves room for those changes while remaining sustainable for our family. But I no longer see every pivot as evidence that I've lost my direction.
What I'm taking with me
I wouldn't say I'm grateful that my brand was copied. I wouldn't choose that experience for myself, and I don't believe every difficult thing needs to be reframed as a blessing.
I lost friendships. I questioned myself. I had to navigate conversations I never wanted to have, and I had days when the emotional weight of it all felt much heavier than the work itself.
My husband, Marc, supported me through those moments more times than I can count. He believed in me and in what I had built, even when I was struggling to see a clear path forward.
I'm grateful for that support, for the customers who continued to shop with me, and for the people who have been part of this business through its many changes.
Most of all, I'm grateful that I kept creating.
Sweet As April is still here. I still make bonnets, and I still love finding a special textile and imagining what it could become. But my work has expanded to include original artwork, surface pattern design, digital products, and teaching.
I'm also working toward something that once felt like a far-off dream: a dedicated studio where I can paint, sew, experiment, and let my creative life take up a little more physical space.
That feels significant to me.
Not because I've proved anything to the people who were part of that difficult chapter, but because I've built a future that feels exciting to me again.
I'm still here, and I'm still making things
Almost four years later, I can look back at that period with more perspective than I had when I was in the middle of it.
I understand why I was hurt. I understand why I wanted to protect what I had built. And I understand now that I didn't have to remain the same version of myself to honor the work I had already done.
The skills I developed through Sweet As April didn't disappear when the business changed. They came with me.
My eye for color, my love of textiles, my understanding of construction, my experience running a creative business, and my ability to turn an idea into something tangible are all still here.
They are part of what makes my artwork mine, too.
I don't know exactly what Sweet As April and Bloom by April will look like five years from now. I hope I'll be painting, designing patterns, making bonnets, teaching, and finding new ways to share the things I love.
I hope the studio becomes a place where I can make a mess, try things that don't work, and spend time creating without needing every experiment to become a product.
And I hope I keep trusting myself enough to follow those ideas.
If you're going through a difficult season in your own creative business, I won't tell you that everything happens for a reason or that you should be grateful for the things that hurt you.
But I will tell you this: the work you've already done, the skills you've developed, and the creativity you've nurtured belong to you. They can travel with you into whatever comes next.
Your business can change. Your audience can change. The thing you're known for can change.
You are allowed to change, too.
I'm proud of the bonnets I made, the business I built, the lessons I learned, and the artist I'm becoming.
I'm still here. I'm still doing what I love.
And there's so much more I want to make.
With love, creativity, and of course bonnets
Carrie
