Spider costume in Spandex

Hello all,

I had the pleasure of creating some costumes for a childrens' dance school here in Trinidad and Tobago. It was a wonderful experience and I will forever appreciate having done the costumes as I have come to learn so much more about sewing for a production. 

This is one of my favorite pieces that I worked on. It was the spider costume for one of the mature dancers.

I started off with a basic leotard block I created using the resources here at patternschool.com . The site is no longer administrated over but the tools remain for use by those interested. 

I realised that using spandex one could piece together any design pattern; swirls, stripes, squares, curves....anything imagined. I did a sketch of a spider as it would appear in front view. I then transcribed this pattern unto the unitard block I created being sure to keep the lines closely matching the design. 

I use newspaper for pattern making in a bid to recycle by simply piecing them together. Once the unitard pattern was transcribed I labeled  and named the pieces so I won't get confused; I also wrote on the pattern pieces what colour fabric I am to cut the particular piece in. There were about 8 or 9 different pieces most of which I had to cut 4 of each. I cut the pieces out with about 1/2 inch seam allowance.

The painful part of this process was putting these little pieces all together at the seams but it was well worth it. The end result was most certainly what I wanted to create. The important thing was to match all points up carefully especially where the colours combined at seams and pieces met to join. 

Here is the final result. These are pictures from the dance show. The photographer is a talented lady specialising in performance motion photography; Karen Johnstone Motiontography.

Doesn't it really look like a daddy long legs spider? I hope you liked the post! God bless