I committed myself to making Vivian’s costume for Halloween.
See, my mother, she who could sew and make magic with her fingers used to make my costumes as a child. She was the McGuyver of clothing. One year, I was a flower with nothing more than a poncho and some bristol board.
I feel that I have a pretty high standard to live up to. My mother’s flag of creation that is. The past few years I felt guilty like crazy buying costumes. It just felt, well, wrong. Wasn’t the point of Halloween to make your costume? (Granted, for some people that just means dressing up slutty and saying they’re a “vampire”-what the hell is that?) I haven’t dressed up in years aside from being my own evil twin because I can’t really create costumes.
But this year, well, this year I committed to making Vivian into a spider. A very large black spider. With legs and fangs.
So today we went out to get some crafty stuff at Michael’s, and I could literally feel my mother’s ghost channelling through me-soon I suppose, I’ll be leafing through McCall’s catalogs. But I could almost feel her-she loved Halloween, she loved creating, turning us, and herself into something else if even for a moment. And for awhile, as we searched and plotted through aisles and aisles of tedious crafty things, I felt more at peace with her memory than I have in a long time.
Now I just I have to figure out how to make the legs stay up. Wish she was here.
Spin Me I Pulsate 
Stuff them with cardboard inserts? Unbent wire clothes hangers? Or just stuff them so full they can’t fall down.
I would have made it out of a garbage bag 😉
Can the legs be stuffed w/ plastic bags? Or maybe make them shorter so their staying up is a non-issue.
wire coathangers might be a bit dangerous on this kid… 😉
My daughter wants to be a vampire for halloween… she totally won’t be dressed up slutty… I however am going to be a vampire for halloween as well and my slut flag will be flying high 😉
That’s a tough one! I also am committed to costumes, but both of mine are humanoid, which makes it marginally easier. Good luck! Maybe you can find a whole bunch of black pipe cleaners and twist them together. Or spray paint non-black ones.
i have zero advice on the costume, but a big smile on my face just reading the post. those little connections, the feeling of continuing on the traditions that make up the connective tissue of family history – they make for good feelings, if wistful ones too.
i want to see the spider when she’s ready!
Oh man, this is totally something I would do. Good luck with your craftiness! Perhaps a bunch of pipe cleaners?
My mom always made our costumes, too. But I’m about as crafty as a bag of hammers. It’s been a long-standing joke in our family, for years, that I’m the only one of us who didn’t get one single crafty or artistic bone in my body.
I’m not laughing. And Isaac is dressing as Winnie the Pooh, in a costume I bought at the Superstore for $20. And I agree, short legs stuffed full would work. So you probably shouldn’t try that. Because if I suggest a crafty solution, guaranteed the costume will catch fire, or something.
Stuff them with whatever, like batting or plastic bags, doesn’t matter, and then take a string (yarn, twine, whatever) and connect them to her arms. If I’m imagining right, her arms and legs will be 4 of the legs, and then there will be 4 more? right? So if that’s the case, have 2 on each side sewn to the sides of the torso part of her costume, and then just connected with yarn or something to her wrists.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, too 🙂
–Dragon