I know I do a lot of posts about derby, but this one is pretty crafty, too…

With just a little tweaking and customizing, I can do a lot with a single pattern.  I’ve bought a lot of patterns from MMMCrafts on Etsy, and the one I’ve had the most fun with is this Little Red pattern.  I’ve never actually made Little Red, but I used the same doll pattern to make a sweet Princess Leia doll for my Star Wars-lovin’ daughter (separate Chewie found here, by the way).

But when my very good “derby wife,” Sunny (also the early founder of my derby team, NPBT), was moving out of state, I wanted to make her something cool & quirky & special.

Since she has short hair, I just left off the ponytails.  I handpainted our team logo on her “shirt,” but I’ve done similar things where you can use iron-on transfers with computer paper and just iron on a logo.

Since our colors were red, white & green, I made the bottom half a different color to look like derby shorts.  She has several tattoos, but I added several more to decorate her arms all up.  I used acrylic paint for her face and tattoos, which (if you’ve ever gotten it on your clothes by accident you know) stays on fabric really well.

I put her number & name on back, made cute little wheels out of buttons and paint, and painted on the kneepads and wrist guards.  The high socks are just a strip of fabric instead of doing one solid piece for the leg, as the pattern said.

I liked it so much, I had to make one for myself!  Uh…I mean, for my daughter.

If I had a long, long time to spare, I’d maybe consider doing custom orders, but they sure do take awhile, and I might have to charge a bit for them.  For now, give it a try it for yourself!  It doesn’t even have to be derby-related.  I think it’d be COOL to have a doll that looks like your friends or family….