The Story

I built the shop because I couldn't find everything I needed in one place

Tinker Tailor started in 2019 out of pure frustration. I was deep into wearable electronics projects — LED accessories, conductive fabric, sensors, interactive garments — and every build required sourcing components from many different suppliers, none of whom understood why I needed conductive fabric alongside a microcontroller board.

So I built the shop I wanted to exist. A single place where the electronic components and the textile materials for wearable projects live side by side, chosen by someone who actually uses them.

Tinker Tailor is a sole proprietor business — which means there's one person behind every product decision, every listing, and every order. That's me: Christine Farion, maker-educator, content creator, and the person you'll find in the comments, on the chat, and at the end of an email if something isn't working.

The Person Behind It

Christine Farion — maker, educator, and published author

I'm Christine Farion — known online as CMoz and on YouTube as CMozMaker. I've been working at the intersection of electronics, fashion, and education for over a decade, and I've been making things glow, respond, and talk to each other for longer than that.

My background is academic as much as it is hands-on. I hold a PhD from Queen Mary University of London — funded by a four-year EPSRC scholarship — where my research explored smart objects, assistive technology, forgetfulness, and everyday interaction design. I later taught at the Glasgow School of Art as a Post Graduate Lecturer in Design Innovation and Interaction Design, and at the University of York for their International Pathway College course in Robotics, Programming and Electronics.

More recently, I was an Instructor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, teaching introductory computer science and programming courses. In 2026, I transitioned full time to Tinker Tailor and the CMozMaker YouTube channel — which is where I'm channelling all of that teaching experience and where it now lives.

In 2022, I published The Ultimate Guide to Informed Wearable Technology: A hands-on approach for creating wearables from prototype to purpose using Arduino systems with Packt Publishing. It's the book-length version of exactly what Tinker Tailor and CMozMaker are built around — real, practical, buildable wearable electronics.

The YouTube Channel

CMozMaker — educational content built on real builds

The CMozMaker YouTube channel is where the teaching happens. As a maker-educator and content creator, I make videos about wearable electronics, fashion tech, and embedded programming — all grounded in projects I'm actually building, with components from Tinker Tailor that I actually use. They aren't just tutorials, they are things you'll want to build and use!

Almost every video starts with a real build problem and works through it in a way that's genuinely useful for people who want to make the same thing. Code is provided, and descriptions for extra information.

The current flagship series — ESP32 for Beginners: Wearable Electronics & Fashion Tech — Complete Course — is a 22-episode curriculum covering everything from what a microcontroller is to a complete battery-powered wearable built from conductive fabric and NeoPixel LEDs. New episodes drop approximately every ten days.

All of the components used in CMozMaker builds are available right here in the shop. When you see something in a video and want to build it yourself, you can find exactly what was used — not an approximate substitute — in the Tinker Tailor product listings. Many listings link directly to the relevant video so you can see the component in action before you order.

How We Choose What We Stock

Every component earns its listing

Tinker Tailor is not a drop-ship catalogue. Every item has been tested on my workbench in Maitland before it gets listed. The selection criteria are simple and consistent: does it work as described, is it genuinely useful for wearable prototyping, is it straightforward to get up and running, and does it integrate cleanly with the other components in the shop?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, it doesn't make the cut.

The goal, over time, is to have a video for every single listing — so you can see exactly what the component does and how it behaves before you commit to an order. That project is ongoing.

What We Stock

The components for the full wearable build — textile to firmware

Tinker Tailor covers both sides of a wearable electronics project: the electronic components that power, sense, and output, and the textile materials that make electronics wearable rather than just portable.

The three categories I'm most actively developing right now are conductive fabrics — which are the unique heart of Tinker Tailor and the hardest material to source well — ePaper displays, which I've been deeply involved with in my own builds (so fun!), and RFID components, which open up a whole class of interaction design that most wearable tutorials don't touch.

On the board side, I have favourite families I return to repeatedly: Seeed Studio, DFRobot, and Adafruit boards appear throughout my builds and throughout this shop. Each has its own strengths — Seeed for compact and capable ESP32 variants, DFRobot for well-documented modules that work out of the box, Adafruit for exceptional library support and the STEMMA QT ecosystem that makes I2C wiring almost foolproof.

Where We Are

Maitland, Nova Scotia — where the soldering iron is always warm

Tinker Tailor is based in Maitland, Nova Scotia — a small community on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, home to some of the highest tides in the world and, now, a small but dedicated wearable electronics operation.

Atlantic Canada is not an obvious place for a tech business. But it's an excellent place to make things carefully and think clearly — and the quality of the light on a good day makes for excellent product photography.

We're proudly Canadian, proudly Nova Scotian, and shipping across Canada and internationally from the Bay of Fundy coast.