Thrift Or Treat: How I Made The Best Costume For My Daughter's Halloween

This summer Marvel released the latest incarnation of one of their most well known characters. Spider-Man: Homecoming also tossed cosplayers and those who love making Halloween costumes a softball. In this movie, Peter Parker dons a “homemade” costume, you could almost hear the young Spidey fans jump for joy. Keeping the color palette within his usual red and blue the laidback look consists mostly of a hoodie, a simple pair of pants, long sleeve shirt, and dark goggles. So when my five year old daughter decided she wanted to be Spider-Man for Halloween I knew just where to go.

On a busy first day of fall, I headed into my local Providence Savers with a few pictures of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man saved to my phone. Thankfully the colors are pretty typical among children’s clothing. Heading into the kid’s section, it was easy to find options. In fact, my only real challenge was finding a top without graphics or lettering on it. First I collected the base layer: light blue long sleeved shirt and leggings. (Photo above.)

After that I looked across both the girl’s and boy’s isles for a red hooded sweatshirt without anything on it. No luck. But that gave me an idea, all I really needed was the hood part of the hoodie. Finding a plain red t-shirt I was able to cut the hood into a type of cowl that can be worn under the shirt.

The Homecoming costume has a type of red tall boot he wears. I knew that would be a tall order for a kid’s shoe no matter where I went. But what I was able to do was stay in the color scheme, that turned out to be very easy. In the accessories area I found a pair of woman’s red winter socks. Tall enough to mimic the boot tops and the right color. Pairing those with a pair of GREAT children’s L.L. Bean boots that looked basically brand new. Probably $100+ value for $8.99.

In fact the only part of this Halloween costume I needed from the actual Halloween section were the goggles. Those they had in spades, although I needed to pull the biohazard stickers off the lenses.

Once I got home the construction began, it only took about half an hour to make the changes I needed. After cutting the sleeves from the red t-shirt I used a sharpie to make the spider symbol on the chest. After that I detached the hood from the sweatshirt and turned it inside to hide the lettering. Final step was the mask. This was something I had gathering dust, it was a free bag made of jersey material. I cut two small eye holes and slid goggles through.