Our Story

LGBTQAI+ Business:

We are a NGLCC-LGBT Certified business! Sue is a proud gender-fluid member of the community, and ALL of our employees are LGBT as well!

Humble Beginnings:

Ever since I got into LARPing, I have been an avid artisan, creating various leatherwork pieces.
Most of my designs are inspired by the wonderful LARPing stories that are told, as well as some pop-culture influences.

Locally Made:
All of my leatherwork is made right here in the US (Chicagoland area) from high quality leathers with each piece being hand crafted. Also, thanks to a talented seamstress, we now have all of our products professionally sewn up. No more tossing sewing machines out windows!

Where to find us:
Besides Etsy, you can catch the Dragon roaming around the Midwest at various conventions such as MFF, Anime Midwest, and other popular pop-culture-themed cons. In addition, Saar, the Dragon God of Potatoes, can be found at various LARP events with all leather wears for sale.

Original Creations:
Oh, the reason I call myself DaSueDragon 'Designs' is because I don't just make leather or fleece hats, I 'design' everything myself. Patterns, layouts, engineering feats unknown to man with leather until now....it's all part of the job!

SHOP ORIGINS:
My business started when I was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in my left foot (aka. Cancer). This caused me to lose my job as a computer programmer (yes of all things) and forced me to start looking for more work. Unable to find work right away, I realized I needed to go back to school, but that wasn't going to bring me any money. In fact, that was going to do the opposite.

Instead, I decided to take a grand leap and try to figure out my "thing". I grew up being taught woodworking by two master builders, hand stitching by both my mother and Nana, painting, drawing, carving, origami, you name it! But I had never settled on one particular craft. Then it hit me........What takes and combines all of those skills in order to make artwork? LEATHERWORK!

Having never tried it before, I dove right in with my first project: Link's Cap. It was treacherous, but I was able to work through all of the ups and downs to finally put the piece together. From there I needed to think big: become a business and sell sell sell!!!

So I came up with a couple of ideas and designs of my own and grew my shop from there. I started with selling my fleece hat designs, which had been successful with my friends in the past, and eventually moved towards leather designs. My first, and most successful design, as thus far been the trademarked "Snakelets" that I sell.

With a shop came a workshop. My workshop is called "The Magic Kingdom." The workshop is named after my Pops' old woodworking shop, to which he spent 20+ years of his retirements working on the most beautiful woodworking pieces and teaching me everything he knows. His collection of tools and equipment was vast and unending, to which now has become my goal to be able to fill a 2500 sq ft basement, like he did, one day. Until that time, I have utilized what I could, acquired the best tools and equipment for my art, and improvised innovative solutions to keep on the path that is continuous improvement to my art.

I never gave up, kept moving forward, overcame the cancer, and eventually grew my business to what it is today.

Thank you, everyone!

I want to thank everybody that supported me through the rough times in getting started with the business, supporting the business, helping me find a new job and helping me overcome the cancer. Without all of you awesome friends, I would not be where I am today!