Once upon a time...... the truest words to any fairytale and well to any of our life stories. Our business all started with a little girl and her insatiable desire to dress up, well at least that would describe Matti. Hannah on the other hand was far more interested in actually creating and selling something; anything from paper purses to sumac berry flower arrangements. One day, Matti was playing dress up with a younger sister - as usual - and realized no hats were to be found among the trove of costume bits and pieces. What does she do but decide to make one herself out of an old velvet shirt, a broken Stratego game box and of course some robbed feathers from the feather duster. Voila! A work of art that soon began a hat making frenzy! 20 hats later, a business friend of our father's told him that us girls should really start marketing Matti's creations on the web so in March of 2006, two high school sisters began Matti's Millinery. Our grandmother had painstakingly taught two elementary aged, home-schooled children to sew with once a week lessons sharing her endless years of creating. (Thanks mom for making these lessons apart of our schooling!) Hannah loved the lessons, but Matti on the other hand was the kid who couldn’t sit still with an overactive imagination. What did our intuitive grandmother do? Put up her hands and say Matti would never learn to sew? Heavens no! She simply offered an incentive to learn in the form of a tea party served on her beautiful Welsh tea service complete with her famous caramel rolls after each sewing lesson. What kid wouldn’t go for that? Thus we learned to sew before junior high. After our sewing lessons were finished, we would make the occasional Halloween costume and various odds and ends but without the aid of a quality, steady and reliable sewing machine. Once we hit high school, a brand new sewing machine came our way as payment from our parents for spending a few weeks painting a garage on our property. That next year the hat-craze overtook Matti and we started our business. 6 months later, when hat sales were not quite as numerous as we had hoped; Matti had the bright idea to re-create a gorgeous Civil War ball gown complete with cape and hat. A week later, the outfit was listed and sold, TWICE! The brain wave had hit. Why not market the entire outfit! We added “& Costumes” to our name, and here we are over 600 pieces later, busier than ever re-creating history for a myriad of happy customers in over 19 countries while doing what we both love thanks to hard working parents and one smart grandmother.