Okay, here’s the last costume and we’re all ready for Halloween! First off, this will hopefully help one of our readers from Facebook, Tiffany, whose daughter wanted to be a spider. I’m going the scary version, but you could adapt it in fun colors to make a non scary version. Here’s my supplies:
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Some opaque tights (I didn’t want sheer pantyhose)
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And some foam insulation from the Home Depot. Quick note, you can use this stuff to make wreath forms, and it’s about $1.50 for a 6 ft piece. Mine was in the plumbing aisle. If you have those pool noodles, you can use those too.
First thing was I stuck the foam together and took off the tape. I didn’t want it to come off and stick to my fabric.
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I cut it into thirds next. Approximates at least.
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So now I have 3 foam pieces.
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If you want, you can do 3 pieces of full foam, but I thought that might be heavy, and not bend out of the way as much. Oh by the way, I cut the foam to the length of fingertip to fingertip, minus a couple inches. Okay, now take your tights
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Cut off the legs where the seam is that joins them to the panty part.
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Then sew from the toe up to the top, just about in the middle. A little off to one side in the middle.
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Then sew right by your first seam again.
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And then cut your tights in half, right down the middle of those 2 seams. Here’s where yours might differ from mine. I did this so I had 8 total tubes.
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Then, you’re going to turn those inside out, so the seam is on the inside. And thread it onto a foam tube.
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If you want to do more fun curvy legs, thread it one and stretch the tights so it makes the foam bend.
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You may need extra foam, so 2 tubes total. It looks really fun though! So if you wanted to do that, you just measure arm to fingertip for the length, and then a little extra for the curviness.
I didn’t want that look, so I loosened the tights so there wasn’t any stretch, and then put another tights tube starting at the other end and made them meet in the middle. There was a little overlap.
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And I sewed through the foam to keep the tights in place. Just a few stitches.
Okay now you have 3 covered legs, so what next? I grabbed my Medusa costume dress
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Which this picture doesn’t do any justice to the awesome costume, but you’ll see more of it here. It was just a plain black knit dress from the DI when I got it. I’m pretty sure it was sleeveless. So, to make it awesome, I changed a few things.
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For the neckline, I added some jags with black fabric, to make it more interesting.
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I added sleeves with making big bell-like tulle sleeves, and then before I sewed them on the dress, I added strips of jagged black fabric, and then sewed it on a sleeve. Hint, I tried to dye some tulle black and it didn’t work. It turned a gray color (which is what I used to decorate my table for Halloween.) because it’s not a straight cotton or natural fabric. Okay? So buy black if you want black.
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For the bottom of the dress, I cut jags up into the hem of the dress (making sure I kept it the overall length I wanted), and I sewed the cut triangles onto other parts of the dress. Here’s a little illustration to help.
So I cut the red lines, and then moved it down to the blue line to make an even longer jag. I also added tulle triangles underneath just to give it more of the jagged look I wanted.
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Finally, I added some netting wrapped around the dress and sewn down in a few places from the top of the dress to the bottom. I love this netting. I wish I could remember where I got it. But it totally reminds me of something a femme fatale would be wearing off her hat to cover her eyes, and of course she has a beauty mark right by her red lips. Back to the spider. So on the back of my dress, down the middle of the back, and just below the armpit line, I sewed in 3 pieces of black yarn.
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I tied on my spider legs so the yarn was right in the middle of the legs. (the pin marked the middle)
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I tied some yarn around the legs at the end so the legs stayed together. It just depends on the look you do of how far you let them spread.
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I sewed the yarn through my sleeve at the top
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And finally I sewed on some red felt in a diamond shape so I’m a black widow. I actually did this before putting the legs on so I could maneuver on the sewing machine easily.
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So that’s the last costume. And just in a rebuttal against Natalie’s cheapskate post, I gotta tell you my total cost for all the Halloween costumes. $16. Here’s the summary, ready?
Bumblebee shirt: $0 I had a coupon.
Girlie skirts: $1 for some tulle. Had everything else.
Wings: $1 for the knee high tights.
Antenna: $4 for the headbands.
Spider Dress: $10 for the tights and foam. Dang it! If I didn’t have to buy 2 packs of tights (which are hard to find anyway), this would’ve been an under $10 Halloween!
So I reuse past costumes, and just update them. Happy Halloween! What help do you still need for your costumes?
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