Tatted Black Widow Spider Pendant

What Halloween is complete without a creepy spider? And a Black Widow is a mighty creepy spider. After many failed attempts at a spider web, i decided to go with a spider instead. This is a pretty basic spider design. An optional stitch is a reverse picot which you can see how to make here, though it is pretty easy to do.

You will need your same tatting essentials for this spider.

Red size 10 Crochet Thread
Black size 10 Crochet Thread
Size 5 Tatting Needle
Scissors
Spray Starch
Iron

To make it a necklace:
Jump Ring
Necklace with clasp attached or chain and clasp to attach

The hourglass is pretty simple.

Tat a Ring of 4 - 2 - 4 cl. knot.
Tat that ring again cl. double knot, hide ends.

The body is one big ring tatted around the hourglass.

Tat 3 double stitches and loop through, when you are looking down at it, the bottom left picot.

Tat 10 more double stitches and connect to the top left picot. You would have to pull the needle through to do this. Make sure to not pull your thread tight. As you can see in the second picture, leave the loop of the ring open so you can close your ring after tatting and connecting the body.

Putting your needle next to the end of the 10 double stitches, tat 6 double stitches. Close to the next picot going around the hourglass, the top right.

Tat 10 double stitches and attach to the last remaining picot.

Tat your last 3 double stitches and put your needle through the loop you left open, closing the ring. Pull it tight and the body should circle nicely. Knot.

For what I have seen of spiders, the legs originate more from the head than the big body. Also, I made eyes with reverse picots. You don't have to, I just decided to. If you don't want to, just do regular double stitches.

So to start the head tat 1, make a big picot, tat 1, big picot, (this gets a little difficult to work with, just try to keep the picots under control, also try to make all the big picots the same size.) tat 2 regular double stitches, reverse picot (tat 2 of the first half of the double stitch, hold thread for the picot, and tat 2 of the second half of the double stitch), tat 1, picot, tat 1, reverse picot (same as first), tat 2, large picot, tat 1, large picot, tat 1, close, double knot, hide ends.

You can see the eyes (reverse picots) in the last picture. They aren't really necessary, they are just a little extra detail.

From pictures, I decided to make my two inner legs on each side shorter than the front and back legs on each side. I cut my inner ones a little shorter than I intended, but the lengths are up to you.

Make sure the picots are laying flat when you cut them so you cut the right ones in the right spot. After I cut them, I pulled on the picot strings a bit to make sure they were tight.

After you have cut the picots, lay it out and iron it while placing the legs where you want. Ironing and starching helps get the long legs to stick out front and back while the short ones go out to the sides. Depending on your starch, the legs should stay mostly where you want them.

I didn't do anything special for the necklace, I just attached a jump ring to the picot at the center of the head and attached that to my necklace.

And you're done! Enjoy your creepy little tatted Black Widow Spider.