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Maija the seamstress

Sewing and other crafts have been been among of my favourite hobbies since I was a little girl. From Barbie dolls I moved on to a model with somewhat less amply developed curves, myself. At the time I was finishing senior high school I had not really thought that much about what to do for living, so as I was interested in clothes I decided I wanted to study dressmaking. After all, I was 18, living with my parents, and thus had somewhat obscure and idealistic views about boring things like getting a job and a steady income...

Not that my three year education has been wasted, even at finding a job, but first and foremost I still regard it as a great experience, giving me a wealth of know-how and urging me forward to go on experimenting with fabrics on my own. And there, I think, lies the true charm of the art of sewing: There are always new things to learn, every fabric is different, every human body is different, there are endless possibilities for experimenting with different things and striving for perfection.

My studies included basics of the pattern drawing system of Müller&Sohn: drawing the basic patterns according to the customers measurements and then working those into different kinds of cut. Following the same principles I have since made patterns of my own, sometimes using the additional help of a dressmaker's dummy, and experimenting with mock-up versions of discarded bed sheets or other cheap material. Making the patterns and fitting clothes is for me one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of dressmaking.

I make clothes mainly for myself and my husband as a hobby outside my day job, though on a few occasions I have made a few things for friends and family. This is why I don't take commissions at the moment. When working with your own clothes you can experiment freely and not worry so much about totally ruining the thing. Of course this freedom and lack of deadlines sometimes has the side-effect of projects taking forever to be finished.

Historical fashion

As every little girl who loved to dress up as a princess I have always had a vague interest for the history of European fashion. Over the years I have occasionally done some reading about the subject, especially about my favourite eras, and learned some more. My knowledge is of course in many points still quite superficial, and as with any other thing, the more you learn the more you find yet to be learned.

One of the things that have impressed me when digging deeper into fashion history is, despite the obvious design aesthetics, the incredible amount of work and high level of craftsmanship. This is, of course, to some extent a feature of upper class clothing, and we also have some amazing couture in the modern age. Still, from an ordinary person's perspective the museum pieces are light years away from mass produced cheap fast fashion of our daily life, and it challenges you to think how you even define "clothing", whether it is simply a necessity of life or a form of art. While on my everyday life I nowadays value the practical and comfortable most of the time, I'm still enchanted with the ceremonial, multi-layered, carefully constructed outfits of the centuries gone.

Another fascinating thing about historical costume is how different the construction methods were before the invention of the sewing machine, and even more notably mass production. In addition the farther back you go the less information can be found. As I come from modern sewing this has been a great challenge to twist my head around and finally absorb. The patterns also often follow a very different logic. The truth be told, some of the period accurate sewing methods, not to even mention embroidery techniques or lace, are simply so time-absorbing and require advanced skills that it can be deeply frustrating to try to achieve something similar. While I have through the years learned much more about how to do things properly, in my own projects I set myself a different goal each time: Sometimes it's to use more historical techniques or learn new ones, sometimes cutting corners and using every modern trick available to get something to wear quickly. Both ways have their own charm and I find it refreshing to alternate between the two. Sometimes I also sew modern pieces to take a break from the huge, detailed projects for the same reason, though they seldom end up in the blog.

In addition to balancing what I know (or think I know) about historical accuracy and my own time and skill limitations I also frequently compromise on materials. Through this hobby I have come to value natural fibers more and more, as they are wonderful to both wear and work with, but for budget reasons I frequently use synthetics as substitutes for silk. I believe that everyone should be able to participate in this wonderful historical costuming hobby in their own way, whether it's doing a lot of meticulous research and painstakingly creating exact replicas of museum pieces, or whipping up something pretty quickly and focus on enjoying the social gatherings, using quality silks or creatively repurposed thrifted materials.

Historical re-enacting & Other costume gatherings

While the love for historical fashion has been with me for a long time, what really pushed it forward was finding several great blogs on the subject. I read them, bought some pattern books, and finally gathered up courage to participate on an 18th century event in 2009 in the first historical outfits I had made for myself and my husband. From there we branched out to Finnish SCA and late medieval fashion, and within these two eras we've had so many great adventures, wonderful memories and met many new good friends. In 2017 I finally began on my long time dream, the Natural Form era of late 1870s to early 1880s, and since then I have been mostly but not exclusively focusing in that. In the few past years I have on a few occasions even visited early 20th century. Theoretically I would be interesting in pretty much anything between late medieval to WWI (and even beyond), but in reality I have to constantly check myself from planning to be able to do too much or hoarding too many materials for future projects.

Some Finnish re-enacting groups and costuming societies I have been a member of or been associated with include Helsingin Wanha Waruswäci ia Caupungin Hywät Asuckat, The Barony of Aarnimetsä in SCA, L'Amusette, Sociéte Helsinki and Muodin Historian Kiertokoulu, all of which can be found on facebook.

Couture Mayah

As mentioned above, costuming blogs have been an invaluable source of inspiration and information for me. With the encouragement (and technical assistance) of my husband Jarno in begun Couture Mayah in 2009. First it focused more heavily on the modern sewing I had done, but pretty soon the historical costuming began to take over most of my sewing time. I have never been very active with updates, in fact I don't even consider Couture Mayah as a blog or any interactive platform, but rather a gallery or archive of my work. Besides maybe providing inspiration or information for fellow costumers it also helps me to process and review my own work, and enables me to check what interlining I put inside that garment 10 years ago. Sometimes the project stories include a fair amount of how-to, which I hope some may find helpful, sometimes they are more focused on photography and the design process.

The photography is (with some exceptions, usually mentioned) by either my husband or myself, and edited by me. Without him it would be impossible to express the so important visual side of this hobby. He is also wonderfully patient in tolerating the mess of scraps and sewing thread in our home!

Contact &
Couture Mayah in social media


I have an Instagram account @couturemayah, which focuses mostly on my costuming and re-enacting hobby, though there is also occasional content of my personal life (such that there remains outside day job and sewing!) I'm not on Tik Tok or YouTube because writing is much more natural to me and in any case I try to focus most of my time and energy on sewing.

If you want to contact me to ask more details of some of my projects or anything else you can contact me at couture.mayah@gmail.com. I'll try to remember to answer!


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