Spider Dog and his web

 
Two years ago, I purchased a spider web dress. It was on a whim, and obviously it took me quite a long time before I found a way to wear it.

First, it needed some heavy alteration.

Skin-tight to the knees, and then suddenly not-quite-skin-tight, ending awkwardly just above my ankles, it was probably one of the most unflattering dresses I ever put on—so bad that I couldn't even take a "before" picture.

The first thing I did is cut several inches off the bottom. I then cut the single strip into two strips, and then sewed them both back on to the bottom to create a ruffle. Unfortunately, the ruffle still fell at an awkward length, so I cut off the ruffle, cut off more of the dress, and reattached the ruffle at hip level.

This dog doesn't know what he's in for!

Cool! I now had a form-flattering spiderweb dress and some extra spiderweb material to be used for whatever I could imagine! And what I could imagine was, unsurprisingly, a Halloween costume. Over the 2 years I'd owned it, I had thought long and hard about how I wanted to wear the dress: maybe as a witch? Perhaps "spider woman?" Finally I decided that a literal interpretation was best, and I would just go as a spider web! My costume was basically a spider theme superimposed on a pretty dress, so my goal was now to take "pretty" and "spiders" and run with that theme.

I happened to have a pair of spider charms that I had removed from a necklace last year (I bought the necklace because I wanted the black choker, but not all the goth accoutrements that came with it), which I attached to earring hooks.

I had also purchased a hand-sized hairy spider on eBay back in August to wear with the costume, and I had the aforementioned leftover spiderweb fabric, which, in a moment of genius, I decided could be made into a veil—a perfect semi-spooky, totally feminine addition to any costume. Basically, I just cut the scrap into an oval shape, wrapped it around half of my face, bunched up the rest of it, and pinned it into my hair. I then pinned the spider on top of the veil with two claw clips around its legs.

I wore flesh-toned leggings and tank top under the dress, the better to make the spiderweb stand out, and then I put on the most dramatic makeup I could muster in the short half-hour I had to get ready.

So that was it for my costume, but my boyfriend and I had happened to find giant spiders at the craft store when we went there the week before, and, at half off, they were too cool to resist. Since we were going to a Halloween benefit for animals, where there would be a pet costume contest, we thought we would dress up our pet as Spider Dog, and I would go along as his web. This necessitated sewing some Velcro onto a dog shirt and then perching the spider on top, which did not please him in the least—even though he won third place in the "Best Couple" contest!

So, he did not wear his spider very long, but oh well, that's just more spider for me!