Spider Legs

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:

Some opaque tights (I didn’t want sheer pantyhose)

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.

I cut it into thirds next. Approximates at least.

So now I have 3 foam pieces.

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

Cut off the legs where the seam is that joins them to the panty part.

Then sew from the toe up to the top, just about in the middle. A little off to one side in the middle.

Then sew right by your first seam again.

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.

Then, you’re going to turn those inside out, so the seam is on the inside. And thread it onto a foam tube.

If you want to do more fun curvy legs, thread it one and stretch the tights so it makes the foam bend.

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.

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

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.

 

For the neckline, I added some jags with black fabric, to make it more interesting.

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.

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.

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.

I tied on my spider legs so the yarn was right in the middle of the legs. (the pin marked the middle)

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.

I sewed the yarn through my sleeve at the top

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.

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?