You are the Dancing Queen...

If you were to ask me what my favorite ABBA costume was, while it would be very hard for me to answer because at this point I like almost all of their costumes, my younger self from a good decade ago would answer "The Velvet Costumes," aka a set of velvet jumpsuits that ABBA debuted in January 1976 when they appeared on the German television show Musikladen, and only wore a handful times more.  These costume final appearance was in March, 1976, when ABBA were in Australia.  However Bjorn and Benny did wear their outfits one final time in April, 1976.  And that was the last time these outfits were ever seen.  In fact, when you go to ABBA the Museum and look at all of ABBA's original costumes that they have on display, these outfits do not appear!

I'm not entirely sure why I had picked these outfits as my favorite.  Perhaps it's the fact that their outfits are all generally constructed the same, the outfits aren't overly revealing and are rather loose-fitting and universal, with a touch of uniqueness as each member has their jumpsuit in a different color.  Bjorn wears blue, Benny wears pink, Frida wears green, and Agnetha wears red.  

When I had first gotten into sewing a good 13 years ago, one of the first outfits I wanted to recreate for my dolls were these jumpsuits, but I had no money and no sewing skill, so the idea of making these seemed so far away.  And honestly I'm glad my parents didn't cave and buy velvet (which is very expensive btw) for me because I would have absolutely wasted it with my poor sewing skills.  

In 2014, I had some actual money to call my own, and after finding some velvet clothes at Goodwill and Savers in the perfect blue and red to sacrifice and turn into doll clothes, I began trying to source some fabric in the other colors I need - pink and green.  Due to my not knowing much about fabric, with my mom's help I ordered some "fake velvet" as I dubbed it - aka Panne Velvet or Crushed Velvet online, and yeah... it was not good.  Fast forward two years later, and with my mom's help, I was able to pick out some Velour in the colors I needed, which ended up being a much better match.  Unfortunately the difference in texture between Velour and Velvet was quite noticeable, but I told myself it wouldn't bother me and finally got to sewing these outfits I was dying to making!

And, the result wasn't half bad.  It was my first time working with an actual zipper, and I only broke one sewing machine needle trying to attach it!  I wasn't the most conventional sewer, I didn't know how to attach zippers so I came up with my own weird way of attaching it by sandwiching it between two layers of fabric.  I also didn't have a zipper foot, so the spacing was off...  It was the most basic of construction as well.  Where ABBA's costumes had details on the chest area, I'm not entirely sure how to describe it - maybe cowboy jacket-esque? - I didn't adding any designs or anything.  It was very basic, very much a product of my sewing skills at the time, but also not terrible.  Like it was very obvious what costumes I had attempted to recreate.

But you know me, I'm never satisfied.  As of 2021, with my sewing skills 10x better than before, I decided that it was time to start putting the time and effort into accurately recreating ABBA's costumes and not settling with what I had on hand.  That required a lot of time, effort, research, and scouring physical craft stores like Hobby Lobby and online retailers for accurate fabrics, and it cost a lot of many.

Anyways, as of early 2022 I had amassed quite a collection of fabrics for future projects, one of them being actual real, regular velvet that I got 1/2 yard of in all four colors I needed to remake the velvet jumpsuits again.  Of course not everything can be perfect, as all the colors were just slightly off.  The pink for Benny's was a bit too pink, Frida's green was a little too olive-y, Bjorn's blue was a little too dull.  (The original blue velvet skirt that I had gotten from Goodwill and used to make my original version would have been perfect had I not used it up....)  Only Agnetha's deep red was the most accurate.  That fact combined with the fact that I hate working with zippers and wasn't quite sure I could pull it off resulted in me procrastinating... 

Now, in May, 2022 when ABBA Voyage premiered, the ABBA-tars were revealed to wear new, modern versions of ABBA's velvet jumpsuits with the only major difference being the fact that they now have their names written across the front in sparly gem stones, as well wearing their belts with the belt buckles visible to the front, whereas in back in 1976, they clearly had the belt buckles on the back so it was only a flat, clean belt visible (with the exception of Benny in March, 1976 randomly).  But as more bootleg photos of the voyage jumpsuits began appearing online, I noticed another key difference, and that being the colors of their jumpsuits.  Surprisingly, Frida and Bjorn's jumpsuits were now more of an olive green and a dull blue rather than the rich green and blue that the originals were made out of.  

 

The difference in color can be further seen now that the Voyage Recreations, like the actual physical costumes they made as reference for the Avatars, are on display at ABBA the Museum.

So, I decided, considering not even the creators of the avatar costumes could get the fabric 100% accurate, maybe the sight difference in color wouldn't matter either.  Finally, after nearly two years of just sitting in my stash of fabric, I began working on recreating ABBA's jumpsuits... again.  Now, velvet is a very difficult fabric to work with.  It's quite slippery, and apparently I still suck at sewing zippers.  I even broke a needle when trying to attach the zipper, haha.  Plus with the added details that I was actually including this time, these costumes were very time consuming.  But, I persevered, and after a good month of sewing with a few long breaks in between because I don't have that type of attention span, I finally have the most accurate versions of the velvet jumpsuits that I have ever made and probably will ever make.

Now the one benefit to the fact that my dolls all have the same proportions now since I remade their bodies in 2019 is that I could just reuse the same pattern for all of their outfits.  Yes, I ACTUALLY made a pattern for once!  normally I just wing it and cut out pieces that look like they'll fit, and usually there's more success than error, but it's not the most efficient, and since I only had a 1/2 yard or each outfit, I didn't want to mess up.

So here we have all four costumes, all with working (and matching!) zippers.  All of them have that "cowboy-jacket esque" detailing on the front,

the back,

gather at the sleeves,

and long, wide-legged trousers with matching melts.

Now, you may be thinking, what about ABBA's Voyage costumes?  Are you going to remake those too?  And well, the answer is yes, and it's already done.  As I was cutting out all the pattern pieces for their jumpsuits, I realized I had just enough to cut out double of everything!  Two of each jumpsuit means double the time, which made this already tricky project even longer, but I'm pretty happy with the results.  I made the names on the front out of this silver sequin-y fabric I already had, with interfacing on the back to make it stiffer and also easier to draw out the letters.  I also flipped the image of the Voyage outfits on display at the museum so I could draw the letters on the wrong side of the fabric, the side with the interface, and then when I cut it out it was in the correct direction, if that makes any sense, and glued them on with hot glue.  I had tried gluing on sequins to try to mimic the actual sparkly gem look of the actual costumes, but it didn't work out.  The lettering did turn out a bit large, and I accidentally glued on Agnetha's "A" a bit sideways, but all in all, it came out alright.

I made the belt buckles out of foam and glued the fabric over top.  And no I didn't make two belts, this is just the same one as before, with the belt buckle turned to the front rather than the back.

And here's a close look at the names:

If there's one thing I'd change, it would be adding interfacing into the collars and also top stitching them, something that I forgot to do for some reason and by the time I realized I was already half way done with the costumes... but perhaps that's something I can add later.

But all in all, I am really happy with these two new, nearly identical costumes that I worked on.

Now, what costumes do I remake next...?