The Dart Board Bib

Once in awhile you have to do something solely for your honey. My boyfriend Wayne likes to play darts. Let's change that - he LOVES to play darts. So, we looked for a good place in our home or yard to mount a dart board.

We live on a hill. Normally it's a good thing (floods, views, all that). But it's not great for darts. There's nowhere outside where there's a long enough piece of level ground to mount a dart board. So we looked inside, and we found the perfect place: the back of the door in a little hallway between the living room and the kitchen. Here's the dart board installed on the door:

And here's The Problem: As you can see, the door is made of wonderful beautiful hardwood, like all the doors in our craftsman home. So, if a darts player misses, God forbid, the dart goes into the door. This is not a problem for Wayne, who is the quality of darts player who does not miss the target. But for me? Not so much. Before we realized the extent of The Problem, I had already sunk several darts into our gorgeous door. Drat.

Obviously something had to be done. I envisioned a bib, like the kind you'd put on a baby to ward off all the food and dribble that naturally flows toward his chest. And I figured I could just hang the bib on the dart board like you'd hang a bib on a baby's neck, and it would stay put if it was stiff enough.

First I looked through my stash of fabrics to find something stiff and tough enough to repel a sharp dart. Last year I made tree skirts for Christmas gifts, and I had some leftover canvas and cotton batting. They could be used, although they were both light colored and wouldn't look so great on the door. I could use the canvas on the back of the bib.Then I found a piece of heavy dark blue denim and decided that would be unobtrusive enough for the front, and masculine enough for Wayne.

I made a pattern by taping a big piece of paper to the door over the dart board and tracing out the circle where the board was. Here's the pattern as I used it to cut out a double layer of the cotton batting stuffing for the bib:

Then I used the pattern and fabric folded in half to cut out the front and back of the bib, putting the fold of the pattern on the fold of fabric. I added 1/2 inch to all edges including the inner circle when I cut these two pieces, to allow for seams.

Using the sewing machine, I sewed a 1/2 inch hem all the way around the outside and around the inner circle of the canvas backing. Then I laid the batting on the inside surface of the back, matching all the edges, and layered the denim front over it all, pinning the denim in a 1/2 inch overlay to enclose the edge of the batting all the way around all the edges, including the inner circle. I sewed all the edges together with a 1/4 inch topstitch, dark blue thread on the top and white thread on the bobbin. It worked great, and here's the result:

Yay! It's a dart board bib, and even if you purposely miss the dart board, the dart doesn't go into the wood of the door. Instead it drops to the floor and sticks in the hardwood floor. Drat. Wayne loves it though, and that's what matters.