DC & Marvel with Theresa LaQuey - the saga

My baby sister, Theresa LaQuey, is a wiz at Steampunk and vintage 20th century clothing BUT she had never done a licensed character before. I've done TONS. Because of the years I spent making commercial toy samples I had to get good at it. Simplicity usually asks me when they get licenses. I do LOTS of Disney and Amy Brown fairies, etc., etc.

This year, Simplicity decided on the Marvel Super Hero license kind of late ... Betsy (my design director) called to say they needed four pattern packages in about 2 or 3 weeks. EEEKKK!! usually I get one pattern package to do in 3 or 4 weeks. Well, I panicked then thought of Theresa. She could do the adult women, which would leave me with the adult men, boys and girls. ONLY ... ha ha.

Theresa was excited and worried!  So the first thing I did was to buy her a proportional scale.

This is an extremely handy little non electronic gadget that helps enlarging a drawing into a human sized thing.

We had such a tight deadline, I suggested patterns she could use to get a quick start. And then I wanted the Misses pattern and the Girl pattern to look like they came from the same world even though we were working on them independently. So I mocked up bat girl hood for the child size ...

and scanned and sent her my patterns (we live on opposite sides of the country) so she could size it up for adults. ... and this chart ...

Which is a chart I like to use when sizing things from child to adult or the other way around.

And THIS is what she sent me back ... HA!

So then I said she had to work out the boot top variations for the three female characters and send her patterns to me and I would size them down for the child pattern.

But there was the usual problem ... how to get the three different boot designs in one pattern. I sent this quick sketch to Theresa. But then she pointed out the shape wasn't correct for Super Girl, the one on the left.

So, I suggested this solution, which everyone liked.

Theresa worked it out and sent her patterns to me.

then a photo of her mock ups.

Which I then turned into the little girl boot tops. I sent this photo to Theresa with one right side out and one inside out so she could see how I finished them on the inside.

These costumes have SO many annoying details and, as I have already said, we were in a time panic. Thankfully Theresa came up with this easy solution for the cartridges on Bat Girl's belt. 

Which I used on my little girl version. All the logos I worked out and shared with her. I'm writing a separate blog about those.



The two of us were working so hard ... Theresa lightened things up by sending me this Youtube link.

Back to seriousness ... then I sent Theresa my plan for the kid Wonder Woman cape so her's would look similar to mine. You can see a lot of the reasoning that goes one when working on a pattern like this.

Here is another short note I emailed Theresa. I don't even know specifically what piece I was talking about but this is the message 

"This is giving me another idea! 

Trying to keep the pattern piece count down.

just a minute"

So, we are supposed to not have too many and unnecessary pattern pieces, the sewing shouldn't be to hard and we should be mindful of how much fabric we are asking the customer to buy. BUT, it still has to look like the license!

the panic continues next time ...