Tag: diy

Quick DIY Spider Costume

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Halloween is five days away. If you still need a costume for yourself or a little one, here is my formula for a quick, DIY spider costume. Unfortunately, I didn’t take process pictures, but this seriously went so quickly that I didn’t think about it beforehand.

Materials:

  • Correctly sized T-shirt
  • Long-sleeved shirt that is two-three sizes larger
  • Socks the length of your arms
  • Thread
  • Stuffing
  • Felt (optional)
  • Serger (optional)

Instructions

  1. Serge (or hand-stitch) hems of t-shirt and long-sleeved shirt, making sure the inner shirt is against the right side of the outer shirt. I did right sides together, so the inside of the costume is the outside of the t-shirt. It was unintentional, but it works well if you have shirts with tags to sandwich the tags.
  2. Flip the shirts so the long-sleeved one is on the inside, and whip-stitch the two together at shoulder and under-arm to hold in place.
  3. Stuff between the shirts to create a puffy middle. Hand-stitch the collars of the shirts together, stretching the smaller collar to match the size of the larger collar.
  4. Stuff the socks so they match the length of your arms, or the length you want them to reach. I used a Soffe big boys’ small long-sleeved shirt and Hanes womens’ size 5-9 crew socks and the lengths matched perfectly. If you are making an adult size, you may either need knee-length socks or cut one sock off at the toes and sew it to another sock to get the right length.
  5. Hand-stitch the socks to the sides of the outer shirt, spacing them evenly down the sides.
  6. Take a length of thread, doubled, to connect the arms and tie a knot at the bottom. String through or sew to a small square of felt, or you can sew it to the under side of the bottom sock-arm. Thread it through the first sock, and repeat the process (leaving some space between arms, however much you feel lets it hang appropriately) with the second sock-arm and the underarm seam of the long-sleeve shirt (placing the felt inside the arm if you are using that method). Do this at the middle and end of each side (more places if you are doing a bigger size).
  7. That’s all there is to it. Add some black pants, perhaps a black hat (I’m making one with red felt eyes) and you are a spider.

I Made Up My Mind…

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to make the Make Up Your Mind tank by Julie of Knitted Bliss. I fell in love with the Mr. McGregor’s Garden comfy sampler from Knit Picks (unfortunately not available anymore) and decided I would find a pattern for it once I got it. I tried to make my own first, but that didn’t work out quickly enough because I wanted this to be my project on vacation.

After a little searching and swatching, I decided Make Up Your Mind was what I wanted. I cast on provisionally for the 40 in size since my gauge was a bit smaller and I wanted it to be a little more flowy since it would be going over another shirt. I did mostly stick with length measurements from the 34 in size, except when it came to how many times to repeat decreases. Actually, I fudged a lot of the numbers because I kept getting off with the stitch patterns and would just decrease until I had an ok amount for the pattern. I was on vacation; I didn’t want to have to actually count my stitches.

This pattern was fairly easy to work, and very easy to follow. I’d say it’s a good bridge between beginner and intermediate skill sets.If you can knit, purl, yarnover, increase and decrease, you can make this pattern, too. Best of all, no sewing seams! You just graft the shoulders together and weave in the ends and you have a ready-to-wear shirt.

Lego My Table

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One of the boys with a June Birthday is completely obsessed with Legos. So I knew I wanted to do something Lego-themed for his present. I didn’t just want to get him another set to build, though. The perfect gift came across my feed one day when I saw this on IKEAHackers. Considering my entire room is furnished from IKEA, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a simpler version.

Truthfully, the most difficult part was probably deciding how I wanted to glue everything down. We used Legos to hold the plates together (I found these plates on Amazon) before gluing them in place with rubber cement.

Altogether, the whole project cost around $30. Much better than the alternatives I found at Toys ‘R’ Us for about $100 more. Not counting drying time (or searching for the table in IKEA), it took around thirty minutes to finish this. Best to have at least two sets of hands, though. Even with the Legos holding them together, the four plates can get a little unruly.