it was fairly obvious from from a young age that I was who I was and well I'm skilled

at a lot of things but not lying I am not I'm not good at hiding myself or or putting up

walls from Seamwork Magazine, I'm Sari Mitnick and this is Seamwork Radio, where we tell stories about designing, making, and wearing our own clothing.

I have to admit something. When I first met Matthew Holloway, I just assumed he wasn't a

sower. I was at a party at our local sewing studio, modern domestic. Almost everyone there was

female, which is pretty much the norm for a sewing event. I just assumed he was somebody's partner

or a friend or relative.

I was wrong. It turns out Matthew is a passionate and dedicated seower.

Even though he started sewing only a few years ago,

he's managed to teach himself to make all kinds of clothing,

including shirts, jackets, and a lot of other complicated stuff.

He's part of a tiny but growing community of men who sew. But Matthew's used to people assuming he isn't somebody who sews. I mean, I check out

at the fabric stores and they ask me if I'm buying it for, even in Portland, even today, people will

ask me who's making it or am I commissioning something or, no, I made

everything I'm wearing and I'm going to go home and make myself a shirt. Thank you. You can't

really blame the lady at the fabric store for thinking that. There just aren't a lot of guys who

sew. But the question is, why? Why don't more men sew? Even though Matthew didn't really get

into sewing until he was an adult, growing up in Oklahoma, it was all around him. I grew up on a farm

north of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then finished high school out in Tulsa in the city itself.

So growing up was, it's divorced from a lot of people experience, but we had chickens and

guinea fowl and raised turkeys and pigs.

So I definitely had a frontier upbringing. Matthew's parents divorced

...