Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Well! I'm finally able to sit down at the computer and get out this post. And not because I was out drinking green beer, either! I was finishing up Sophie's dress.

She is currently the only doll I own from Tonner's 10" Ann Estelle line. The dress pattern is one of the few patterns right now that I can make up without too much trouble, so I chose it for this day. I'm going to be concentrating now on spring clothes for all my dolls. Maybe something for a J-Doll next.

Irish themed clothes, especially dresses for Irish step dance, are very popular among doll manufacturers. Among other things, Tonner made Irish Lass a part of his Kripplebush Kids line for two years.

Photo by Diane Drummond from Tonner catalog

Around that time, Tonner also put out an Irish dancer in his Betsy McCall line. A picture of that doll can be seen on this Pinterest page, along with a great many other photographs of Irish dance dolls. American Girl not only produced Irish dance wear for the 18" doll, one of the dolls in the smaller Girls of Many Lands line was an Irish dancer as well. In her book we learn something about the early history of modern Irish dance.

Not only did Tonner produce dancing dolls, in 2006 we saw Irish Incantation Tyler, in a beautiful golden gown. Here are some photos of the doll, although not the gown.

Another Tonner doll that did not have an Irish theme but certainly looks very Irish is the doll currently gracing my blog header, Elegance Sydney from 2003. She was a basic doll and came wearing a pale green teddy and matching shoes. Here is another picture of her, wearing a dress and bracelet from Franklin Mint's Princess Diana.

Urgh. Video I wanted to put here is not working from either Blogger or YouTube. I'll try tomorrow. It's already way late for this.