Tarantula Costume

My 4 year son, Dominic, is a lover of all things bug, and his favorite is the tarantula. He decided last April that he wanted to be a tarantula for Halloween and never changed his mind. His favorite Halloween movie is Curious George Boo Fest, and the little girl in the movie dresses up as a spider which is I think where he got the idea. So I did some Google and Pinterest searches and pieced together my own design based on other’s ideas.
I went to Target and bought a long sleeve black shirt in his size for $5, a pair of black pants for $11, and black winter gloves for $4. I ordered a black beanie for $8, and 2 packs of 30” black sew-on Velcro for about $5 from Amazon. Then I hit up Joann craft store and got 6 medium sized, sew-on googly eyes, a yard of black fabric that was on sale, 2 brown/tan/white feather boas, and some poly-fil for around $25 with coupons. Things I already had were fishing line, black thread, and black shoes.
First I cut 4 long strips out of the black fabric to make into the additional spider legs. I folded them over and sewed the sides together. Then I stuffed them with the poly-fil and stitches closed the ends.
I cut 4 approximately 3 1/2” pieces of Velcro and sewed 2 onto each side of the shirt, spaced apart evenly. The velcro acted as an anchor to attach the additional spider legs to so that the weight from them wouldn’t cause the stitching to rip out or the shirt to rip. I sewed the opposite strip of velcro to the stitched up end of each spider leg and attached them to the shirt.
Next, I measured and cut out 4 strips of velcro to sew around the arms of the shirt sleeves, one each just below the elbow and one at each wrist.
I used fishing line attached to the sleeves to hold up the additional spider legs so when he raised his arms the others would raise as well. I cut 4 lengths of fishing line, approximately 3 feet each.
I made 4 tight knots in the end of each fishing line and started my stitch through it into the back side of each opposite piece of velcro to hold it in place. I added stitches in a zig zag pattern down the length of the velcro so that the tension on the line as he moved his arms around wouldn’t cause it to tighten and bunch up. I let the excess fishing line hang loose off the end of the velcro.
Next, I cut strips of the feather boa to match the lengths of the velcro with the fishing line and did some quick stitches around the boa into the velcro to hold it in place. (A glue gun would probably work well for this too). Then I attached the velcro with the fishing line and boa to the matching velcro already sewn onto the shirt sleeve.
To attach the first additional spider leg to the shirt sleeve, I left about 6 inches of the excess fishing line between the wrist and leg, made 2 loops around the spider leg for good measure, and tied a bowline knot to keep the line from tightening around the leg. Then I repeated with the next spider leg.
I repeated this with the fishing line from the elbow of the shirt sleeve, except I shortened the line left between each one slightly.
I then measured and cut 8 more lengths of the boa and wrapped them around each fishing line “joint” of the additional spider legs.
For the pants, I measured and cut 4 more lengths of the boa for just below the knee and at the ankle and did some simple stitches to attach them
The last thing I did was sew the googly eyes to his beanie:)