Royal Roller Derby Hats

I asked my pal Amy Wilson, of the Detroit Derby Girls, to report in on the special derby hat she made for the royal wedding last week. Take a look:

The Detroit Derby Girls were invited to a huge bash (the Metro Times’ Best of Detroit party) the night of the Royal wedding. I’d set my alarm for 4 a.m. and watched the whole hat-laden wedding extravaganza, and it inspired me to put together a little “fascinator” of my own to wear to the party. We derby girls had been instructed to wear our derby gear, so I didn’t want my hat to be too fragile or fancy- it had to go well with my uniform while clearly sending the message “Yes, I am that girl who plays roller derby yet is sappy enough to wake up before dawn to watch royalty from a distant country get hitched.”
For my Royal Roller Derby hat I started with the hard plastic black plate that covers my knee pad. Then I covered it with real fishnets I’d soaked in fabric stiffener and stretched over a large metal mixing bowl. I used hot glue to attach one of my old wheels, some feathers and a little yellow bird from Micheal’s, and scrabble tiles spelling “SK8.” I also hot-glued a long piece of black elastic to the underside of the knee pad plate to keep the whole she-bang from falling off my head. And voila! Roller derby meets royal wedding. And we lived happily ever after.