WORCESTER, Mass. - Stitch by stitch, Hannah Olech makes dresses from different time periods. Her hobby is inspired by her love for history.

“I kind of just make them because I like making them in the same way that people draw or paint, just because they like to draw and paint,” Olech said.

Olech graduated from Clark University with a degree in biology, but has been interested in history since she was a kid. She often visited museums.

“I always wanted the clothes, but they're really expensive and so I kind of thought, ‘well, I wonder how hard it is to make them,”’ Olech said. “And as it turns out it's not that hard, it's just a little time consuming.”

She started making dresses about five years ago. So far she’s made about a dozen historical costumes and makes modern dresses, too. Olech often wears her designs to events.

“I like the planning project, she said. “I draw it, and then I source materials, and then the hand finishing work, are my favorite parts.”

The dress Olech was wearing is based on a 1950s design. Meanwhile, the one she’s adding detail to has been in the works for more than a year, but not all of them take as long.

“It depends on the dress,” she said. “Some of them are really simple and only take about a week. Some of them, especially like your later Victorian period ones, that are built over lots of foundations, and really complex can take upwards of two months.”

And as Olech makes each dress, she’s learning about past traditions people had.

“You come to realize that our perceptions of what people in the past were like aren't super accurate, and they were way more like us than we sometimes think,” Olech said.