Linda Sparks was born in Toronto, Ontario and graduated from George Brown College in Fashion. Her career started in the Toronto fashion industry but a move to the country changed her direction and she began costume building for the Stratford Festival Theatre in the late 1980s.

After almost ten years in theater, she opened Farthingales in 1997, a company she created to supply architectural products to the theater industry of North America. Farthingales stocks unique products like corset making materials, that can't be found in most fabric stores.

In 2006 Linda opened Farthingales L.A. Inc. to better supply the US market. Farthingales L.A. Inc. is a corset shop, selling the raw materials, patterns, books and both ready made corsets and custom corsets. The L.A. location is also where Linda teaches her corset making workshops. She is the author of The Basics of Corset Building.