Tag: Roller derby

Octopus Award

Making a plush to celebrate a fellow skater

Our new tradition of making an award for the end of roller derby season took place again. I got to make an award for one of our newest skaters. My inspiration came very late, but when it did, it hit hard. My skater is someone who does all kinds of things; in her daily life she’s a hairdresser and a barber, is getting married soon, moving into her house etc. I wanted to reference all of that, and include her way of turning around on roller skates, which is more of a ‘disco turn’ than a step transition. So I decided to make an octopus plush with a disco ball for helmet.

Gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.
Back of gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.
Gray and yellow octopus plush detail of attachment of disco arm to a little hook

I already had the Octopus plush pattern from Choly Knight, so I decided to reference that. Since the normal round arms from the pattern wouldn’t be conducive to give a ‘holding something’ impression, I wanted some longer arms. Reddit came to the rescue with this post by CynamonoweKrzeslo, where the sewist also helpfully shared the pattern for their tentacles. I enlarged the pattern a little until it was the size that I wanted and cut some out in a grey fleece and yellow bobble minky. The test-tentacle looked great! So I cut out eight more before heading to bed.

Gray and yellow octopus plush
Top of gray and yellow octopus plush
Bottom of gray and yellow octopus plush

The next morning, I assembled all tentacles and needed to decide on the size of the head. In the end, the original Octopus plush pattern head shape, the eyes and laughing mouth were all enlarged 150% and printed out. This looked great, so I embroidered the eyes and mouth on and assembled the plush together. One of its arms is put into the disco fever pose with a little hook that you can hang a tiny loop on. The helmet is made from foam and an overlay of sequin fabric (for a disco ball effect) – I am still finding sequins in my house. The pattern was based on the normal head shape of the octopus plush with a little extra space. Some ribbon is used for the straps.

Gray and yellow octopus plush, with zoom on the ring and key cardboard icons around its tentacles.
Gray and yellow octopus plush with a focus on the donut and comb cardboard icons around its tentacles.
Cardboard icons of roller skates, cupcake, comb, ring, key, scissors and donut.

To reference all the items, which I wanted to keep removable, I chose word icons (to keep a similar style) and printed them on cardstock. I put two together with a loop of sticky tape to get them to stay around the tentacles. There are two roller skates, a ring, a donut, a cupcake, a comb, scissors and keys. I also wrote a rhyming poem to explain what I did. The helmet is also removable, so it can also be a ‘naked’ octopus.

I think he’s adorable and I hope she’ll enjoy having him around!

Wheels for Days

Roller derby is played on all kinds of floors. We skate on a wooden floor that has qualities that shift with the weather. What this means is that we tend to skate on different wheels in the different seasons. Harder wheels (ranges 90+) allow for more speed and slide and less grip, softer wheels have more grip but may feel slower at times (78-88). I’m currently skating on 92 (summer, so the floor has grip of its own), but in winter I skate on a mix of 84 and 88. If we play on a soft sport court floor elsewhere, we go up in wheel hardness, last weekend, I skated on 98. What this means is that I have accumulated an almost uncomfortably large amount of wheels.

I used to store all my wheels in ziplock bags and tried to stack those, but they always rolled everywhere. So a little while ago, I went on the hunt for patterns for wheel bags. In the end I resorted to an adapted version of a zippered box pouch. There wasn’t a ‘right size’ pattern online that I could quickly find, so I resorted to making a scale version from paper to determine how it worked exactly.

After the scaled version was completed, I drew it out in the right measurements, added seam allowance and got on with it. The considerations where the the bottom should be flat for the bag to stand on, there should be enough zipper to allow the two stacks of wheels to enter and exit the bag, it should not be so large that the wheels slide around and it needed a carry strap. I cut out the first iteration and sewed it together. My wheels are also different sizes, I have one set of 38 x 59 mm (S), one set of 38 x 65 mm (L) and 3.5 sets of 38 x 62 mm (M).

The first bag (black mushrooms) was too large for the medium wheels, it needed about a cm in width reduction, but the large wheels fit in fine. For the second iteration (yellow mushrooms) I removed a cm along the width sides but I made a mistake in making the bottom smaller, so that one has an additional pleat. It again didn’t fit the M wheels, but the S wheels fit in fine. Next attempt, I reduced the width by .5 cm and made the correct adjustment on the bottom. This version fit the M wheels, so I cut out another and found that I didn’t have the right length zipper anymore. So I shortened the height by 8 cm on my paper pattern (which was a little too much in hindsight) for the half set and cut it out. I did have a zipper long enough for that one, so it was sewn together quickly. At night, I went to the sewing supplied shop and got more zippers – luckily it was the one night a week where the sewing shop was open until 21:00.

All of these bags are made from waterproof tablecloth fabric. The first and second fabric have also been used for the EDC, the pineapple fabric was already in the hoard for pouches, but I never got around to it. All pouches have a carry strap from a bit of fabric left over from some part of pouch making. I specifically gave the pineapple pouches different coloured zippers and carry straps to be able to differentiate the wheels inside with a single look. I will also add labels to the outside. For some non-deliberate reason, all my harder wheels (88+) are black. All the softer wheels (84-) are green. Happy coincidence? Anyway, my wheel pouches are now nicely stacked two high in the closet with less chance of them falling over and rolling everywhere. So far, this project feels successful.

Alternative Shower Caps

My roller derby team has chosen its colours (yay!), and we are getting ready to start playing games against other teams. In honor of this occasion (and because I really hate the pink ones we have now and I found a free pattern online), I decided to make new helmet covers. Helmet covers are large shower cap like things players put on their helmet to signal their position. There are three positions on a team and two of those require a helmet cover. The jammer (who scores the points) has a star on the helmet cover. The pivot (who is the only one eligible to become the jammer) has a stripe on the helmet cover.

The colours that were chosen were yellow and black. So I wanted to make covers in both colour combinations, and make two of each in order to have some spare. It took some time to find the lycra required. On the Rotterdam market I found the black lycra, no nice yellow in sight though. I didn’t want fluorescent yellow, but a more natural yellow. Only one shop sold that and I bought a meter.

I cut out the patterns, and I still have fabric left over for at least three more covers in each colour. Then I sewed them together using a zigzag stitch in black or yellow (which I still had in stash), depending on the base colour. Some elastic was added and hey presto, eight covers. Now we need to play and see if they work or if adjustments are needed. Exciting!