Jon announced in September that he wanted to be a spider, which struck us as a relatively straighforward* project to do. This was a good thing, since this year’s construction was a real race against the clock. Because of work deadlines, costume building wasn’t able to start until the last minute, so it was really down to the wire whether it would get done in time for the little trick or treaters!
So we assumed our usual spheres of responsibility: I covered the small amount that was sewing-related, while Peter took on the vast majority of costume construction. On the day before Halloween trips to office supply shops, art stores and Queen St. fabric stores ensued.
Mailing tubes and fabric.
The same mailing tubes, painted and shaped, and cardboard. As ever, hot-melt glue is your costuming friend.
Spider carapace glued on and starting to get stuffed with bubble wrap and plastic bags—a LOT of them.
In the meantime Jon got fitted with a tunic with a cape-like flap, sewn from the spider fabric. The spider then got hung over our front porch (no time to construct a web, alas) and the flap got pinned to the spider body so that Jon was attached to the spider as its head and front legs.
Ta daah! One man-sized spider, ready to give out treats! We were going to make a hood with spider eyes for Jon to wear, but the night was so warm—and Jon hates hats sooo much—that we nixxed the idea.
Warm, but unfortunately rainy. The poor Riverdale Halloween Show players had to perform on a slickly wet stage in the pouring rain. But the show went on, and it was fabulously topical (the show creators couldn’t have asked for a better news tie-in thanks to the shenanigans of our mayor!
* It was also a bit of a relief, because earlier this year he announced that he wanted to be a Cyberman from Doctor Who, which is a bit more complicated.↩
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Bev says:
November 7, 2013 at 9:29 am (UTC 0)
Yet another amazingly cool costume!
And the strings suspending the spider body from the roof of the porch make it look like Jon’s just rappelled down on spider silks.
Helau & Alaaf | Das HIRO-Blog. says:
February 13, 2015 at 10:54 am (UTC 0)
[…] gilt für den Blog des Cartoonisten Peter Cook, der schon einige Rollstuhlkostüme mit seinem Sohn Jon gebastelt hat (für weitere Kostüme auf […]