American Girl Yoke Skirt and T-Shirt

Today's post is an example of why just storing links is not enough you need to download and store the patterns safely or have printed copies before the links disappear. Even with recovery links, they only last a little while when they disappear.

The Yoke skirt pattern was one of the early patterns I downloaded from ABC knitting's crochet patterns for the 18 Inch dolls. At least for the moment you can still find the pattern here. It's been sitting in my 18" doll binder for years but sadly I'd never made it.

This year I was playing with gauge trying to figure out how to master the t-shirt from the free Red Heart Summertime Frills pattern found here when I decided to make a sample with yarn I wasn't as concerned about destroying. I played with it a few times and liked the look. Having finished the shirt, I realized it wasn't the right color for the Red Heart outfit, so I needed something for the bottom. I had some Navy yarn I wanted to finish off and remembered the Yoke skirt pattern. Thus again out of my practice was born another outfit.

The Yoke skirt actually brought me back to my own Jr. High School days. I've not seen a wrap skirt for the 18" dolls at least in crochet. They were all the rage during my Jr. High school days although ours were cloth and had cloth ties instead of buttons. I had almost forgotten the fashion until I started working on the outfit and trying to figure out how the skirt was supposed to be joined. As I looked more closely at the pattern I came to realize it wasn't going to be joined in the traditional sense, but was more like the wrapped skirts of my youth.