Cat Dresses

The Cat Dresses are some of ABBA's most iconic outfits, and when I first made my ABBA dolls, I knew I needed to make these outfits ASAP.  As you can probably guess, I've attempted to make the cat dresses several times over the past 9 years.  Today we'll be taking a quick walk through memory lane, and then you'll see my newest attempt. :3

I'm not sure if I've ever shared pictures of the first ones I've ever made, and they're honestly so cringe worthy, but it's worth a laugh, so here they are:

 I probably made them around late 2011/early 2012, and I did not pay any attention to detail back then.  I had a basic tunic pattern I made that I used for pretty much all of my ABBA costumes back then, and painted on cats that did not resemble the original cats at all with blue and orange acrylic paint.  I decided to paint belts of the same colors around the waist part of the top.  Then using scrap stretchy fabric from one of my Mom's leftover sewing projects, I cut out large rectangles that was just wide enough to wrap around their waists, with extra parts at the sides so I could tie them together.  Then I painted the tops of the stretchy skirts blue and orange.

For the boots, I made boots that would fit my dolls' oddly shaped feet, only I didn't know how to get their feet into the boots, so I left large slits at the side, originally made it so that the boots would tie together using yarn that I glued on, but that didn't work so I later glued on snaps.

9-years-ago me definitely had some good ideas for how to make the Cat Dresses, just they didn't turn out right, and why couldn't I have made the skirts out of the same materials as the top? They would have looked so much better, lol.

I soon realized how bad my first Cat Dresses were, and in May of 2012, I tried again.   This time they looked tiny bit better, but also they were pretty bad.

I used the same weirdly shaped tunic pattern for the top, and this time I tried to recreate the cats as accurately as I could.  I painted them using blue and yellow acrylic paint this time, and also this was around the time I discovered that we had a ton of rhinestones in the house, so I glued them all over the cats.  I definitely did a better job with the skirts - they had slits on both sides like the actual ones, and they were held together with elastic.  I even sloppily wrote Agnetha and Frida's names on the back of their respective Cat Dresses.

My biggest problem with these cat dresses is honestly the paint job.  I can't expect better of myself back then for using plain old white cotton, because that was all I could get at the time and they didn't sell Satin at my local Walmart yet.  I had stupidly decided to paint the cats while my dolls were wearing the cat dresses, and it resulted in my Agnetha doll having a big blue paint splotch on the back of her leg ever since.  I wish I had painted them all on a flat surface, and maybe the paint would have been less messy and I would have done a neater job.

But also, painting is also quite messy, and I had accidentally dripped the paint in several places by accident and once that's done, there was no going back.  (Note the black circle in the top center of Frida's cat dress...)  Also, the paint dried really weirdly on the fabric - it wasn't smooth at all.

Only three months later, I finally made better boots, this time they were just little booties with checkered ribbon attached to them so they could wrap around their legs and look kinda like Agnetha and Frida's real boots.

Here's a fun fact: in 2013, I had actually made for myself full-size Cat Dresses, and I drew the cats on Microsoft paint and printed them out onto transfer paper, though the whole outfit was pretty bad and the cats were nowhere near the right size, lol.

Anyways, the May 2012 Cat Dresses definitely lasted a while, but two years later I decided it was time for a redo.  My mom had this silk fabric that could be printed on with a printer (8.5" x 11" sheets that you'd put through the printer and then peel off the back to get the fabric), so I did some honestly, really creative stuff and printed out the same Microsoft Paint cats.  I made new belts, new boots, and even adding lining to the skirts, and these were pretty good, despite the fact that the cats tails didn't really line up at the sides. 

I spent the next 6 years pretty happy with these costumes, even though there was a part of me that was nagging me to redo them with real satin seeing as Walmart was selling that now. But also I didn't know of anyway to get the cats onto the satin without having to paint them on, and since the fiasco with my 2nd attempt at the cat dresses, I didn't really feel like doing that again.

When I made my friend Eleonore mini-ABBA dolls in 2016, I used satin and got a good feel for how to make cat dresses out of real satin.  I quite enjoyed it, despite the fabric being so slippery.  I used iron-on transfer sheets to get the cats onto the fabric, and it unfortunately didn't stick very well due to the slippery-ness of the satin.  For the boots, I made proper boots with ribbon that wrapped around the top of the boot instead of the boot being made entirely out of ribbon, and I was pretty happy with that.

Fast forward to 2020, and I decided it was finally time to redo the cat dresses for my dolls using real satin and acrylic paint.  This time, I made sure to paint the outfits while on a protected surface, not on the dolls themselves, and I used this incredible thing called fabric medium that when mixed with paint, it dries to a nice consistency.  I've definitely learned from a lot of my mistakes and all the different cat dresses I've made in the past, and I think I've finally made a cat dress that I'm happy with.

 I made Agnetha and Frida new belts and boots, and even added the snaps to the shoulders of the Cat Dresses, a detail I've never bothered to add in the past.

Fun fact: I actually accidentally got paint outside the lines on the back of Frida's skirt, and after trying to remove the stain and failing, I completely redid the back panel again.  Can't help but be a perfectionist. :P

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane with me, and my new and improved Cat Dresses.

Also, if you'd like to know how I made my cat dresses, I actually wrote a tutorial on how to make the Cat Dresses in full-size using the methods for my doll-sized ones, which you can check out here. :)