Biography
Hey! My name is Linny, born in 1988 and I’m veteran in the Dutch costume scene.
I'm a chemical analyst that have had this strange passion for years, until around 2020 when cosplay and renaissance fairs got more recognized by the public.
The first years, making baby steps
I learned the basics of sewing at a very young age. I remember walking proud to gym class with my self sewn bag, I was about 12 at the time. Later in 2006 I found a cool gothic dress design by "Mart Visser" in a sewing magazine where he published his patterns. Knowing well that buying a cool prom dress was not in the budget, I asked for help to sew that dress instead. Not long after that, I found out about "The Elf Fantasy Fair" (later known as "Elfia"). I got super excited and I decided to make a gothic bride costume and join their event in 2007.
This was the start of my deep dive into a sewing rabbit hole, I wanted to learn and make something new every time. Seeing waist reducing corsets gave me my sewing spark, and I sewed my first boned corset in 2008. When I made my first "fairy ball gown" with wings in 2009, I joined my first costume contest. I was scared to death and super thrilled when I found out I won the Royalty mention prize! This gave me even more motivation, so much so that I decided then and there that I have to learn how to make my own patterns if I wanted to create the outfits that I have in my head! Back in the day you had no other option, because there was hardly anything available at the time in regards to what I wanted to make.
Growing up , becoming a pro
My first encounter with my new pattern challenge was the "Steampunk Nurse" in 2010.
That was the first outfit where I managed to draft and create my very first patterns!
This turned my pattern bug up to eleven and the first big costume that I created with my newfound knowledge and experience was "the Crazy Duchess" sewn in 2012, and I won first price with it! After that, I became more active in the costume contests.
Around 2014 I discovered the cosplay community as well and I joined some events in my "Genderbend Hades" costume.
At the time I enjoyed visiting these new types of events so I built the "Diablo 3 Monk" to compete in the "AnimeCon" costume contest in 2016!
Here's where I unfortunately found out that the European cosplay contests value their "acts" higher than the craftsmanship (60/40 at best). As a crafter with past costume contest experience, this was a huge shock to me. It left me pretty disappointed and felt excluded in a community that claimed to welcome anyone with open arms. I still can't comprehend why there are hardly any craftsmanship contests in Europe. Even if you manage to find one and sign up for it, you have to be lucky to even be picked out by the organization! Even after filling out a massive questionnaire!
So, to stand up for crafters and craftsmanship; I started to be more active as a crafting judge in 2018, enjoying seeing the craftsmanship of others and leaving the act judging to the other expert(s) in the team. You should only be allowed to judge something if you have a portfolio or enough evidence that you have the experience or know-how in the category you're judging in, because nothing is more demotivating than being judged for your follower count instead of your skill-set.
Later in 2018 I had my very first booth with sewing panels at "Dutch Comic con", besides judging the Cosplay competition.
Tragic backstory was cast, Health problems
Slowly but surely I was turning into a true professional, to the point where I was planning on starting to work less at the lab and take 1 or 2 days for myself to expand my costume empire. However, that's when the health problems started.
In 2019, I lost my eyesight due to an unknown immune disease. My entire world collapsed, and I had to learn how to live with and accept the fact that I couldn’t do what I loved anymore.
After being blind for almost 2 years, I was lucky to receive two cataract surgeries somewhere in late 2020 (mid pandemic). It took me a lot of time, energy and pain/discomfort to get used to the overabundance of impulses called "sight" that I didn't have for a full 2 years!
I was very lucky to meet a good partner for the first time and 4 months into the relationship we received the news that I have ovarian cancer. It was a hard pill to swallow, especially because at the time I had just recently conquered blindness. This led to activating my "hospital mode" again for the second time (it's a long story, longer than this one).
So onto chemo I went, while the world was too busy fighting an ongoing pandemic.
I was lucky to see the year change to 2022 and was fortunate to get through my last treatment early that year.
Finding the right help after all these medical complications and mental struggles that come with them hasn't been easy. Close friends and family avoided me when I asked for their help to process all of this. Before that, I mostly saw them when I needed a lift to the hospitals.
I dealt with the hard reality of being left alone to fight my life threatening battles.
I was hardly ever invited to anything, and even after I was invited they wouldn't take into account my medical condition!
I found out people have been making fake promises to me the entire time, they were too busy posting about projects they couldn't even have done without my help in the first place!
When browsing on Deviant-art & Instagram of all things I had to find out some of my closest friends posted my stuff as self-made, and that I've been blocked on all social accounts! Sadly because of events like these, my trust in people is damaged. Therefore I decided not to offer my skills for free anymore.
As an artist with over a decade of experience I should be fairly compensated for the skills and quality I deliver.
Bright new future starting, Linny 3.0
(See history page for 2.0 & full story)
(See history page for 2.0 & full story)
After those long and dark years, I hope to start over.
And this time at my own pace.
I made "Darkness" after years of absence which I enjoyed making so much, after so long. I'm proud to say that I'm back in mid-2024 working on "Frieren", with a lifetime's worth of experience.
Trust me, I'm happy to say I haven't had the need for a hip replacement if you catch my drift.
Seeing how a lot of the newer generation is clueless when it comes to making a start on making their own costumes! I made the decision to start making crafting patterns and self-designed/developed tools.
This was a difficult decision to make since I never wanted to sell the blueprints to something I worked months on to develop! Seeing how little credit the artists get for their work on the socials is pretty demotivating. I'm missing a lot of alignment markings in most offered crafting patterns, and some even miss crucial altering points that should allow you to alter the pattern yourself to your body shape!
