Spiderweb Wrap Skirt

Of all the holidays, Halloween has always been my favorite. And of all the silly things that Eddie and I have been excited for about having a baby, dressing up for Halloween was one at the top of the list. which is why i decided to make two costumes this year. Which is slightly insane. I'm definitely the person who ends up finishing a costume on Halloween night, if at all. But I couldn't resist aiming high! And believe it or not, I finished them both. Before Halloween! It's a Halloween miracle!

The first is a costume for all three of us. Finn is going to be the president, and Eddie and I will be his secret service bodyguards! We haven't tried it all on together, so I don't have a family picture yet, but here are some of the props. I made a cardboard podium, and sewed a little tie onto his little onesie. I'll definitely add pictures when we get them!

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The second costume is just for me and Finn (sorry Eddie!) because I wanted to make something slightly spookier. After finding some awesome inspiration photos of spider and web baby carrier costumes, I decided I would give that a try. But I wanted to make the web something that I could wear by itself too, so I decided to create a web skirt instead of just a web of string for a costume.

For the skirt, I used a free pattern from Lila + June that I'd been wanting to try. It's a simple and beautiful full circle wrap skirt. Cute enough that I would wear it again, but easy enough for a quick costume. I found an old black sheet in my stash to use for the fabric, and could just squeeze the size 12 pattern pieces out of it by slightly shortening the length of the skirt, and being willing to join the waistband from a few pieces. I love the way it turned out, and considered just keeping it without trying to paint a spider web on it, in case I screwed it up. But in the end, I figured it was such a quick make that it would be simple to make another one (or two or three!) if I messed this one up.

The next step was trying to figure out how to add the spider web to the skirt. I had some white paint laying around, and after testing it on a scrap, thought it would do just fine. I used tailors chalk to test out the spacing of my web, and then painted one of the lines. And it took FOREVER. And really, as I sat there looking at it, contemplating the hours and hours it would take to pain the whole thing, I decided that the chalk looked just as good as the paint and would be much faster. So I whipped out a chalk marker I had laying around, and simply drew the lines for the web. Super simple and super quick. 

For anyone who wants to recreate this skirt, here's what I did for the web: 

Vertical lines: Drawn on every seam, and also equally dividing each section into fourths (I just folded each section in half, marked it, and then folded the halves in half and marked them again at both the top and the hem).

Horizontal lines: I measured and marked 2" down from the waistband for the first line, and then gradually increased the spacing between each layer of the web going down. 3", then 4", then 5", then 6". Then I freehanded the curves between all the marks.

I also created a little spider stencil for myself, and chalked in some spiders dangling from web on the ends of the belt pieces. Which might be my favorite part of this skirt.

So the fact that I used chalk may have you wondering if this whole web is going to disappear the first time I wash it. I have no idea. I thought about this before I went for the chalk, but if it does disappear, I'm fine with redrawing it. But I'll just find a paint PEN to do it next time. No way am I gonna try a paintbrush again. If you have any suggestions for fabric paint pens let me know!

So here it is: the finished skirt! I'm so happy with how it turned out! Initially, I worried that the skirt was too full to really show off the web design, and considered trying to find or make a petticoat to fluff it out. But after a few days in the time-out corner, I decided I loved the way it looks. This happens with about 90% of my makes. I finish it, hate it, walk away from it, and then when I come back I love it! 

Web down, now I had the spider to go. I realllly wanted to make a furry spider after seeing some of my inspiration photos, and luckily I had some furry remnants in my stash that ended up being perfect! I cut a simple circle for the body, large enough to cover most of my infantino baby carrier, and then cut 8 strips for legs. I whip stitched the legs closed around some pipe cleaners to help give them shape, and then safety pinned it all onto the baby carrier. Super simple! The one downside is how much furry fabric sheds when you cut it. It looks like I killed a small animal on my workroom floor. 

The Final Result:

I love it! And I am so proud of myself for actually finishing these costumes two days before Halloween. It's a new personal record.