Boo! Did I scare you? I love Halloween! It’s one of the best holidays, because it’s socially acceptable to dress up as anything you could possibly imagine. The second reason I’m obsessed with Halloween, is obviously because it gives me a reason to make any costume I could possibly imagine and the opportunity to wear it. Now of course that’s what I did this year.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written something, mainly because I’ve been incredibly busy, but also because I hadn’t much to write about. That’s all changed now. I’m thinking of making a second part to this post, so if another appears, you won’t be surprised. Ok then to get on with it.
Halloween. It’s only really fun if you’re surrounded by people also into the holiday (someone who doesn’t dress up is an immediate red flag). What adds to it is having places to go when dressing up. I had both of those setting this up to be a great Halloween already. As for the costume, year after year I find myself searching for last minute costumes even after pondering the topic for months. This year, let’s just say, I took the term “last minute costume” up a notch.
This past weekend one of my closest friends was hosting a party. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to wear and definitely spent way too much time brainstorming in the two weeks leading up to it. Finally I decided on Gwen Stacy as spider-woman from Into the Spiderverse. I’m not blonde or anything but I just adore her spidersuit in that movie so I thought it’d be fun to recreate it. Naturally I didn’t start it until I had way too little time.
What does one need to make a spider suit? Tobey Maguire shows us well enough in his first film as the hero, with superb sewing skills he seemingly pulls out of thin air. Let’s start with the things I had: a pair of black leggings, a black t-shirt I was willing to destroy for the cause, stretchy white fabric, stretchy pink fabric, thread, a sewing machine. Pretty much everything I would need. I got a pattern off Etsy to make a turtleneck with my white fabric, which I modified to attach the black parts on the front and back. If you don’t know what costume I’m referring to, search it up and a lot of what I say following will make much more sense. I cut parts of the sleeves to add the pink bottom half and cuffs. I briefly considered embroidering the spider web pattern on the pink (on the sleeves and later the hood), but given the time constraints and lack of embroidery skills, I fell back to blue marker.
That took care of the suit. What’s missing but the famous mask. I’ve never made a hero mask before and spoiler alert it did not go well. I watched this video to make a simple mask and the guy made it seem simple enough. I got all the materials off Amazon: pc fan mesh for the eyes, craft foam for the eye borders, spray paint in white and pink for the eyes and eye borders. I only really needed eye supplies as I planned to use some leftover white fabric for the mask itself. I cut the mesh and foam into the eye shapes I wanted. I’ve never spray painted anything and the internet said to do so in an open well ventilated space, so I went to the alley behind my building and sprayed paint on the pieces. I let them dry a bit, picked them all up, went back inside, and set them to dry some more next to an open window. Now for the mask. I think I followed the video guy’s pattern correctly, but he must have a smaller head than I do, because once I sewed it together I could not for the life of me get it over my head. Looking back I do think it was the material I was using. I cut the mask in the opposite direction of the stretch so it wouldn’t stretch open when pulling it on. Unfortunately this was the last of my fabric, so it was time to pivot. I went into my collection of assorted things and dug out an old pair of sunglasses. Perfect! After positioning the eyes I made over these, I hot-glued them on and had my mask.
Lastly for the hood. I had no idea what to do about this. I grabbed one of my hoodies and traced out the hood on some white and pink fabric and sewed the two together. I pulled the blue marker back out and drew some more spider webs over the pink fabric. Then I didn’t know where to sew it onto the shirt, so I sewed it along the collar. And that was that! My costume was complete! And with a whole hour to spare until the party.
Did I mention I started working on this the night before the party at 11:30pm? I did say it was a last minute costume. But just wait till you hear about the one I made for an event I had on Tuesday. Sadly a story for another day, since between making these two costumes I’ve found myself with way too many neglected assignments and upcoming deadlines. The grind never stops, as they say. Till next time!