Gray Aboyne

I love making dance costumes for dolls, and for the first time ever I made an outfit for someone as a thank you gift. Last Thanksgiving my cousin gave us all a wonderful surprise, she sent the entire family scarves for gifts. She had crocheted all of the scarves by hand and sent them for around twenty different female relatives who were able to attend Thanksgiving dinner together. I can't imagine all of the work and planning that went into scarves. She even included all of the little girls, and my daughters really loved them. I wanted to send her an equally awesome thank you, and a regular card just didn't seem like enough, so I surprised her with an outfit for her doll (she also collects American Girl dolls).  I wanted to make it special, so I created an aboyne for her like my daughters wear when they are Scottish dancing.

 Here is my doll, Daphne, modeling the outfit I made for her. Normally when I make doll clothes I try to design them so they are easy for my daughters to put on and take off their dolls. But because my cousin is an adult, I was able to make the outfit a bit more authentic. Scottish dancers wear the aboyne for the national dances. The aboyne consists of a gathered tartan skirt, a tartan plaid worn over the shoulder, a white peasant style blouse, white petticoat and a vest that laces up the front.

Normally when I create an aboyne vest I use ribbon stitched to the front to give it the appearance of lacing (this is easier than having to lace up and tie the vest for my daughters every time they want to dress their dolls) but I actually created a real lace-up front on this outfit for my cousin.

I really love the way the vest laces down the front and ties at the bottom. Notice the Scottish broach on the right shoulder. The broach is used to pin the plaid in place (dancers also pin the plaid down in several other places so it doesn't fall off while they are on stage).  One thing that is really fun about working with a plaid material is that you can change the look of the outfit by pulling a different color in to highlight. If you look back at some of my other aboyne posts, you'll see that I've used this same plaid material to create other aboynes, but when it's paired with a blue vest it looks different then it does with the gray.  I really love how sophisticated this outfit looks, and my cousin said it was the best thank you ever, so I was really excited!