Thread: Cheesecloth

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Hi All,

I noticed that bulk orders of cheesecloth can be ordered in different grades. For those of you out there that have used this for your flying crank ghost and other props, do you have a grade that you feel is better to work with.

Happy Haunting!

I think it's all a matter of personal preference. Kinda like what color they use for them. Some prefer green over the "typical" natural blue color. Plus, I would think most haunters only make a few of these at best. So comparing them may be difficult to comment on.

Personally, I found a local fabric store that sold cheescloth by the yard. 'm not sure of weight or anything. Something to definately keep in mind is the tighter the thread, the heavier the ghost will be. Heavier cloth will also appear less transparent. Just some things to think about.

I simply ordered the 10 pounds of "Un-graded Cheesecloth Remnants".

GhostTown,

What are the average size of the remnants?

As soon as they arrive, likely next week, I'll be sure to let you know.

I also ordered the 10 pounds of remnants (from http://www.lionsservices.org/).

The shipping was more than the cost of the cloth itself (not their fault, of course), but even still it was a good price.

Now of course, your results may vary, but here's what I got:

I was pleasantly surprised at how large the pieces were. I'd say at least 70% were 6 feet or longer and the normal width for that kind of cheesecloth. There was a good mix of all 3 kinds, although I think I got more of the medium grade than of the other two. The heaviest grade feels and looks a lot like cloth, although you can certainly still see light through it. The other two are lighter and gauzier and are wispy in the air.

Some pieces had obvious flaws - holes in them, or an opaque 'big seam', or had the edges cut off, but I'd say 80% of them looked just like the full-price. They just weren't 10 yards long like the kind they sell in the package. I think the longest one was about 12 feet long. They were all clean and new.

I used them all in my garage to hang from the ceiling and to drape over stuff. They make nice 'curtains' that conceal the next part of the haunt. I also soaked them in elmer's glue and put them over balloons to make 'spider egg sacks' - these dry quite tough but they're light and airy. 10 pounds went surprisingly fast!

I would definitely recommend for anyone that can use that much cheesecloth. (Once you have it, you'l figure out what to do with it )

I was wondering if I could use cheese cloth to make "skin masks"? Does it mold?...I know nothing about cheese cloth.

I think it would really matter what the glue or binding agent was, and what you were trying to mold it on top of. Cheesecloth is nice in that it's very light so you should be able get it to pick up a significant amount of detail, especially if you can use a lot of little pieces.

I don't have a ton of experience, but so far I have been impressed at how strong just cheesecloth and Elmer's has been after it fully dries. As I said, I put them over balloons, and then after it was dried I popped the balloon and took it out. The result is very light and fairly rigid. If you rest your hand on them, they stay in shape - if you push with some force the cheesecloth 'egg' will squish in, but you can 'pop' it back out and into shape again. Since cheesecloth is very light and bendable by itself, I imagine this is the result of the glue really permeating the cloth completely.

But, I'm not sure that Elmer's glue would work well for molding into or onto a surface, since it would likely just glue the whole thing onto the mold, unless mold is very smooth or slippery like a balloon. Maybe one of the spray-on, quick drying glues would work better - if it can glue the cheesecloth to itself and make it rigid, without gluing the cheesecloth to the mold.

Sorry I didn't get back to this thread. I'm a dummy.

My experience with buying the bulk remnants is exactly like Parr's. In the end, I really like the cheapest stuff the best because of the wispy action. We dyed ours in buckets with tan and black Rit dye, then we took one of our cat combs to it in order to distress it and make it ratty looking.

Below is an example of how it looked around our set up. We also hung it on many things all around our display, and used with Elmers glue in making the large props we built this year extra creepy. In the end, I believe this is excellent stuff to have around if your a Halloween enthusiast. It has hundreds of uses. Hell, it's just good to have around the house for it's many uses.

Wow, that cheesecloth looks fantastic on your lights and corn husks, GhostTown - very creepy!