Masters of the scene

 As part of ABBA's 1979 world tour, they presented themselves on stage with fresh new costumes made to highlight the cold climate and mountains of Sweden their home country.  They'd come out on stage wearing the colors of white, blue, and purple, and halfway through the show they'd change from one set of costumes to the next.  

Opening the show, they'd come out in these white costumes, and the first time I attempted to make these costumes for my dolls was in mid-2015 (Agnetha's costume & Frida's costume) when I'd decided that satin ribbon was the ultimate material when making ABBA costumes...  I understand what I was thinking - satin ribbon comes in all shapes and sizes for a a decent price and a huge multitude of colors.  However what I was trying to do with it just wasn't working. Ribbon can't really be cut and shaped, otherwise it just frays, and no matter how much glue I used to keep it in place, it wouldn't work.  Also trying to put non-stretchy ribbon over stretchy white fabric didn't quite work either.  So ultimately I kinda abandoned that project with the hopes that someday I'd make a better version.

This last month or two, I've been slowly working on making these costumes using more accurate fabrics and materials, aka spandex.  While my recreations are nowhere near perfect, I'm really happy with how they turned out, and here they are:

Here we have Agnetha and Frida's outfits.  I know the colors look a bit off in the photo, like the pink stripe at the top of Agnetha's outfit looks super pink and very vibrant, but in real life it's not like that.  Ideally I would have gotten a light purple, but I wasn't able to get that.  It's alright though.

Here's Agnetha's outfit with the "skirt"

Agnetha's outfit without any belt/skirt.  I don't think she wore it like this irl, but I thought I'd share anyway.

And Agnetha's outfit with the belt

And Frida's outfit:

In 1980, Frida wore the outfit without a skirt or belt and paired with thigh high boots and a jacket. At some point I will make those, but for now here'e the outfit as is.  I'll also make her Gimme Gimme Gimme dance pants again at some point, I just need to get better fabric :)

And here is the front and back of Frida and Agnetha's skirts.  They were quite complicated honestly, but I'm satisfied with it

And here are the boys:

For Benny's outfit, I just had to make him a new shirt since his pants and tie are the same.  Yes his tie is still massive and I have yet to adjust it. xD  I actually really enjoyed making Benny's shirt, it was a little tricky to pattern, but it turned out decent.

And Bjorn's outfit was the simplest, though oddly the stripe at the sides was super tricky to work with as it's a stretch fabric while the rest of his outfit is satin.  I intentionally did that as that's how is outfit is in real life.

Aside from a couple of variations to the outfit that I want to make, like Bjorn's jumpsuit/flightsuit that he would sometimes wear during the 79 tour, Frida's Japan variation, and the GGG dance pants, I think these outfits are done and I'm really happy that I finally made them.

I've got a few more sets of costumes that I've been slowly accumulating supplies for and can't wait to make, but I don't think I'll be getting those done before the year ends as I'm very slow with my sewing lately. xD  But either way, I've had a lot of fun working on these and can't wait to make more!