When Hobbies Collide

I took up roller derby a few months back and had to put most of my sewing projects on hold as a result of this new obsession.  I'm trying to sew as much as possible now and some recent creations suffer from being overrun by derby:

The Derbrarian Bag

Derbrarian, def:  a portmanteau (word, not luggage) which combines derby and librarian.  Our very own Sewer Slut, Susan N, also joined roller derby with me and, for her birthday at the beginning of this month, I decided to make her a derbrarian bag. Using the skills learned from my embroidery class, along with the Roller Derby and Sexy Librarians (+ Secretaries) patterns from Sublime Stitching, I created the following two-sided bag for Susan N:

I also lined the bag with some blue corduroy to cover up the ugly inside stitches and to give the bag a little bit more structure.

The Injury Apron

During a conversation with one of the players who had broken a leg during practice, we discovered that a solution to being confined to crutches or to one location in a house would be to wear an apron.  That way you can keep your phone, the remotes, a pen, your wallet, etc., all in one place without having to go search for them.  The apron has the added convenience of being attached to your waist, so that you do not have to deal with a purse or plastic bags attached to your crutches.    As a result of this conversation, I created the following personalized aprons for two injured players:

I think that Raven's name got lost a little bit with the busy skull print and I found that the red letters of Kiki's name didn't flow very well with the red bandanas on the pirate skulls, which is why I moved the letters to the waistband area.  The only downside with doing that, is that the reverse side of the apron is no longer pristine due to the red thread used to attach the letters.  Initially, I used Steam-a-Seam to attach the letters, but after multiple washings, I find that the letters on other projects just started to peel away from the fabric.  I wanted to secure the applique a little bit more, so I ran a blanket stitch all the way around the perimeter of the letters.

Raven's apron was delivered on Halloween in a post-surgery gift basket from the team. I'm a little late in delivering Kiki's apron, because she got her hard cast off last week, but she was on crutches yesterday, so hopefully she can still find it handy. I'll be delivering her apron later today!