Our Story

The Modern Maker was created in 2013 when Mathew Gnagy, the founder, chose to write his first book about historical tailoring. With an explosive Kickstarter and thousands of enthusiastic supporters, he began a new journey.

As a life-long costumer and craftsman, Mathew’s skills were never limited to historical clothing, nor were they limited to tailoring. After years of working for others, he chose to start making his vast knowledge accessible to the public. As it became his living, he wrote more books (5 so far). Not all of them are about sewing, some are about knitting and some that aren’t yet written are about crochet and lace making as well as upcoming work surrounding modern dress.

After a 15 year career in New York City, spanning education, film, television and the fashion world, Mathew pulled up roots and moved to Virginia where he ran the costume shop for Colonial Williamsburg from 2022-2025.

After all of those adventures, in 2025, he moved to Sweden and is in the process of devoting himself to Swedish tradition, history and all that entails in regards to clothing and dress.

No matter what he does in the modern, professional world, he always comes back to historical clothing and his passion for teaching people how to make it. There are few things he enjoys more than seeing someone use his work to make their own, fantastic historical and modern clothing.

As interest has grown, it has become clear to him that he should create a bigger, better, more diverse platform to provide people with education and skills in making beautiful objects. This site is the fruit of that labor.

Happy Stitching!