Sport Skort Evolution

In December I will be playing my first roller derby game. It is very exiting and very scary. We will all be wearing a yellow sport top with our name and number on it. However, for bottoms, we can figure it out ourselves. I wanted to have something different from just short leggings (or long leggings), so I set out to create a skirt with attached short leggings, now named the sport skort.

The first iteration used the leggings pattern from the striped leggings, taken in along the side seam and back seam significantly. With an added full circle skirt from some strange waffle-scuba type stuff. I had the waffle stuff on the outside. While testing it out, I determined that I liked the idea of the skirt, but since the fuzzy side was down, it kept sticking to the attached shorts. It was also very full which made it behave less than ideal. This is also why it ended up in the closet and is wrinkled in the pictures.

The second iteration took the same pattern, but I overlapped the side seams to each leg is now one piece. The skirt is a half circle from the same fabric as before, now added with the waffle side in and the fuzzy side out. The waistband is still from the leggings stuff, now with an added pocket for my mouth guard. This is most likely the shortest skirt I’ve ever worn outside of my house.

The only reason I dare to wear this it is because it has the attached leggings. This version fares much better and I’m actually thinking of making a second one, since this one is very comfortable. I declare this a success!

For the second version I cut the skirt with the same diameter, but being a half circle vs. a full circle, the waist takes up more of the diameter and the skirt becomes shorter. On the left the first version and on the right the second version.

Getting Ready to Ref

I may have mentioned before that I am part of a roller derby team. We haven’t played any games yet, but we are starting to get there. It’s very enjoyable to practice the skills and do things on 8 wheels, but I am not yet sure whether I like getting bruised. Next to that, I generally find rules very interesting and the rules of roller derby are no exception. I voluntarily read all the rules before it was even necessary and I tend to remember them too. Only one logical conclusion could be found, exploring refereeing was the way to go.

Part of refereeing is the outfit. You need to have a shirt with about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide white and black vertical stripes. Officially it also needs to be professionally made, but for practising I think home-made would also be fine.

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Fabric was really hard to find! I haven’t been able to find black & white stripes of 2.5 cm wide in the vicinity. At some point I found a top at a local shop with the correct width but then the stripes were horizontal. I bought two of those shirts in the largest size and decided to harvest the fabric from those. This means that there is a seam across the bust and back, but it does not bother me. The pattern is my standard shirt pattern, with sleeves. I chose a v-neck, because it makes it easier to get over the head (with helmet). The bands from the tops were also reused for the neckline and sleeves. The project was a long time in the making, since about January, but I finally finished it!

The sleeve bands have a small opening, I wanted to see if that would work. It does, and I like it. The hem was done with a stretch twin needle, I was very happy that that worked too! I haven’t worn it on skates yet, but so far, I am happy with it!