While wood- and metalwork are traditionally considered to be a male domain in the Estonian household, everything concerning textiles have been women's work. Although similarly to many other cultures, the professional weaving, dying and tailoring was done by men in Estonia, this did not much concern Estonians, as less than a hundred and fifty years ago virtually all clothes for the peasant family were produced at home. The only exception were some overgarments, such as longcoats and fur coats, which were ordered from the tailors and coat-makers.

In a peasant's household, only in the very first stages of the process of cloth- and garment-making - e.g. shearing sheep or processing flax - did men have a central part; after that, it was all upon women. And this was no easy task: in the 19th century, about eight lengths of cloth (each about 40 to 60 ell long, i.e. about 170-250 metres in all) per household were woven each year. Factory-made fabrics did not become more widely spread until the late 19th century.

The naturalistic flat-stitched floral design in Rococo style that had reached rural Estonian embroidery in the 17th century (although it did not spread to the southern parts of the country) has triggered all sorts of derivations up to the present day.

Not surprisingly, then, it was textile work that proved to be one of the most resilient in the changing times: during the disappearance of rural handicraft in the early 20th century, for instance, it 'bestowed' numerous patterns of its artefacts to other fields of handicraft and the emerging applied art.

In the early 1900s, parallel to the dress of Estonian country folk changing according to urban fashions and style, some ideologists of the newly established Estonian nation started to talk about 'national costumes' and to promote their use. Such ideas met with a warm welcome among many Estonians, since under the double rule of the Russian tsar and Baltic German nobility, traditional costume was taken to symbolise national self-awareness and aspirations for self-determination.

Yet, there was an alternative approach present as well, with many urban Estonians subscribing to the idea of becoming Europeans, the faster the better and at any cost; this included giving up peasant clothing in favour of smart European urban attire. Combined with the gradual disappearance from the collective memory of the habit of wearing national costumes, the pursuit resulted in the 'everything goes with everything' attitude - by the 1920s, national costumes were rapidly degenerating into pseudonational carnival dress.

As a response, in the 1930s, textiles become one of the first handicraft branches to see the full-scale advent of 'scholarly folklorism'. Ethnologists who graduated from the newly Estonian-language Tartu University did their best to 'work out the proper versions of Estonian parish costumes'. Their efforts, epitomised by Helmi Kurrik's Estonian National Costumes (1938), managed to expel the most gross manifestations of ignorance, but at the same time sanctioned 'set descriptions' in a way comparable to that done with the Scottish Highlanders' 'clan tartans' by the Victorians. After WW II, the standardisation of national costumes was continued by the publication of several treatises with similar aims and titles, the most prominent of which - Estonian National Costumes by Melanie Kaarma and Aino Voolmaa - appeared in 1981.

Textile work in general in the post-Second World War Soviet period survived and developed along its natural path, largely 'thanks' to the lean times. Hardships taught people to make something out of nothing, which is certainly an excellent accomplishment as well as being a significant feature to distinguish Estonians from the population of the western European welfare states. The imagination of local people here as well as their frugal habits or the skill to put everything to use, gave remarkably fine results at tough times. A good illustration of this is any creative and discreet reinterpretation of the traditional costume pattern, cut or style.