Knitting the Old Scotish Way! for American Girl dolls

I found this great Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/people/jacknits  that offers adorable modern knit patterns for our American girl dolls.

 

I love this so much! Trendy and easy to make!

I love these dresses. Patterns only $5.00

Jacqueline Stewart Gibb is a  62 years young lady who was born in Edinburgh  Scotland and lived there untill she was 12 when her family was due to move to Vancouver Island under the "government assisted passage" scheme for tradesmen but due to her grandfather's illness she never made it to Canada. A year later she moved to Stevenage,a "New Town" in Hertfordshire,England which is about 30miles north of London.

Jacqueline tells me "I had learnneed the art of knitting at the age of 6 from my grandmother and it still makes people smile when they see me knit the "Old Scottish Way" with the right needle tucked under my arm for support. I loved knitting for my dolls and soon I was knitting my own designs for every doll in the neighbourhood in exchange for bits of wool, buttons,sweeties ,crayons and drawing paper.Later in life my daughter's doll clothes were the talk of the school with everyone wanting doll clothes "like Kerry's mum makes"! So my school fete days were very popular with my doll clothes stall"

I had to know how she came to make clothes for our American Girl dolls and Jacqueline says after she had a 37year career in banking and when she  took early retirement at 55  needed to do "something else" so out came the dolls clothes patterns. Jaqueline says  "but they were all so "old fashioned" and after searching this wonderful thing they call the "Web" I was still so disillusioned with all the dull, boring patterns that I switched to knitting Aran cardigan sets for newborn babies and selling them on e-bay. I had a few yarn oddments so started knitting for dolls as well to my own designs that I thought were a bit more up to date. E-bayers kept asking me where I got my patterns from and wanted to buy them,so I thought "let's give it a go".
I wanted to know if there was a line of dolls like American Girl dolls in the UK and how she found her model to create her patterns to fit 18 inch dolls.She found her doll in the UK on this site http://www.mydollboutique.co.uk/precious-day-girl-doll-elisabeth-2011-567-p.asp

"There were a lot of American and Canadian buyers of my Aran items that also bought American Girl Doll clothes on-line so I started the search for a doll model.However there is no such thing as a CHEAP American Girl doll so I typed in 18inch dolls and found Elisabeth who is an 18inch Gotz Doll from their "Precious Day" collection.She has been my inspiration and I can't stop looking at my teenage niece and her friends clothes and thinking "Elisabeth would look good in that".I lay awake some nights with ideas popping in and out of my head and can't wait to get up in the morning to put the thoughts on paper. There are a few more designs in the pipeline but I have made a resolution that I can't start something new until I have finished knitting my current project."
I can not wait to see what Jacqueline comes up with next!Stop by and take a look at Jacqueline's shop on Etsy at  http://www.etsy.com/people/jacknits

Picking up my knitting needles, as we speak! I need to start practicing!
As with all my posts I would love to hear from you so please leave me a comment here or email me at karenwmowen@gmail.com