Handmade Halloween: Black Widow Spider

I love making Halloween costumes when I can; I've been doing it for ages (see a list of costumes I've put together for myself in this post here). This year, the kids were inspired by a photo I showed them from Facebook of a baby dressed up as a spider. I was pretty excited, as this spider costume has been on my bucket list for a long time, since my sister did it when she was in elementary school.

Socks + googly eyes + felt + old pool noodle + hoodie + xacto knife + glue gun + needle & thread = black widow spider costume. #handmadehalloween #diy

A video posted by Lisa Corriveau (@spokesmama) on Oct 31, 2016 at 2:28pm PDT

After mulling it over for a bit, I picked up most of my supplies at our local dollar store. This is the materials to make TWO spider costumes:

• four pairs of black men's socks
• a bag of googly eyes
• a sheet of black glitter felt
• a sheet of red glitter felt

Other supplies that I had on hand were:

• black thread & needle
• hot glue gun & glue sticks
• embroidery floss
• scissors
• Xacto knife
• old pool noodle (a thick one)
• two black hoodies or jackets
• black pants, shoes, gloves

The process is pretty simple, not a lot of sewing skill required. It took me about two to three hours total. You could do it much faster if you used hot glue or fabric glue or even staples to stick things together, but I used Linny's regular jacket & hoodie, so I wanted this all to be easily removable tomorrow.

1. Cut out two segments of pool noodle that are the same length as the socks. Slice them into quarters lengthwise so you have eight long skinny pieces of pool noodle. If you can't find a thick pool noodle, you could use a regular one & cut it into halves or thirds.
2. If you want slightly thinner arms as I did, turn the socks inside out & sew a seam from the top of the heel all the way to the toe, about 2-3cm in from the edge. Turn right side out & stuff pool noodle sections into the socks.
3. Sew the open ends of the socks to the side seams of the hoodies/jackets. Sew the red hourglass shape to the front of the chest (or the back, if you're really going for biological accuracy). I stitched just one side on & then safety pinned the other side down since both jackets had a zipper down the front.
4. To make the fake arms move with the child's real ones, use the embroidery floss to sew through the pool noodles, leaving 5-10 cm between each noodle & knotting the thread on each arm, then attaching it to the underside of the wrist of their jacket.
5. Fold both felt sheets in half & cut two hourglass shapes from the two red pieces for the black widow marking; two semicircular pieces from the black for the head/mask. Cut a jagged edge along the flat side of the black semicircles to create fangs.
6. Hot glue the googly eyes to the black mask part, (I did six large ones, but you could do more, or different sizes too) then safety pin it to the top of the hood. Alternatively, you could cut eye holes in the mask before hot gluing the googly eyes, then attach elastic straps to the sides to create a half mask. 

Voila! Black widow spider costume, times two. This cost me less than $10 in supplies. It's going to be warm--Linny's costume is his winter coat, Bronte's is her brother's big hoodie which she'll wear over her winter coat--but light so they won't get tired. In theory, I could remove the seams out of the socks & Oliver could use them later. The pool noodle I used was an old one that had been degraded by sunlight & no longer floats properly. I will probably convert the masks with an elastic strap & put them into the "Tickle Trunk" for the kids to wear another time. 

Did you make Halloween costumes this year or in the past? Tell me about it!

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