How I made my ball of yarn costume last year - tips for beginners

I did the beach ball trick last year for a party and the wrapping stage is exactly as tedious as it sounds. I used an old bedsheet cut into strips about two inches wide, stretched them a little as I went, and the criss-cross thing is real. My first layer looked like a mummy, but once I added the second layer in the opposite direction it suddenly read as yarn. My ball was smaller than the beach ball size people ussually grab, maybe a large exercise ball instead, and I was grateful because my shoulders got tired of reaching around anything bigger.

One thing that worked for me instead of hot glue was fabric glue stick from a big jug and a cheap paintbrush. The hot glue gun kept leaving hard ridges under the yarn strips that showed through later, and it also made repositioning impossible when a strip went crooked. The liquid glue gave me a few seconds of slide time.

For the walk-around part, I skipped the whole round costume and just did a yarn ball on my head with a plain hoodie covered in wrapping strips. My neck lasted about four hours before that weight got old, so if you do a full body sphere, practice standing in it before the actual event. Sitting down in it is a whole negotiation.

The bathroom point is the one that gets skipped every time. I wore mine to a Halloween bar crawl and learned you shoud eat light that day. Getting half out of a glued-up sphere in a stall with one friend holding the top open is not a memory I needed. For anyone worried about overheating, I drilled a bunch of hidden holes through the ball before wrapping. You can't see them once the strips are on and it made a huge difference inside. I lasted a full evening where my first test run nearly cooked me.

The thing that saved my sanity during the wrap stage was a cheap spray bottle filled with water. I was using jersey strips and they kept curling back on themselves before I coud get them positioned, so I started misting each one lightly as I laid it down and the fabric just clung in place while I worked. Made the whole criss-cross stage go twice as fast. I built mine for a school fundraiser, not a party, so I also learned you end up answering a lot of questions from seven year olds about wheather you can see in there. You cannot, plan your exits by feel.