How to Make a Super Fluffy Totoro Jacket ( Inspired by My Neighbour Totoro) 🍁🍁

I have loved the My neighbour Totoro anime ever since I was a little kid. ( I say that like it was long ago I'm only 15) ... I have always wanted my own Totoro merch but I have never seen a Totoro jacket that I really like and is affordable.. sigh

So I had a great idea, why not just make it myself can't be too hard...

That was an understatement, but the end result is worth it. I love my new jacket.

Disclaimer - I do have dyslexia I only put this there as an, if you see a spelling mistake I'm very sorry, I have checked this over like a hundred times and even used Grammarly but, you never know...

The Supplies you will need:

1. A super Fluffy grey jacket
2. Some super fluffy white fabric
3. Embroidery hoops
4. Embroidery Threads/ Dark Brown, Black, White
5. Needles
6. Cotton embroidery fabric
7. Superglue / Fabric glue
8. Fabric pins

Backstitch

I like to first start by teaching you how to do the stitches, This allows me to refer to them during the later instructions and not have to make them any longer than they have to be.

1. First, start by knotting your thread and threading your needle at the end of your string.
2. To start off the stitch, Push the needle through the back of the fabric.
3. Then like runners stick push the needle through the front of the fabric about a 1/4 inch from the previous entry hole.
4. Now, you want to pierce through the back of the fabric leaving a space of around ½ an inch from the stitch you have just made.
5. Now as the name suggests, you want to go back threading the needle through the stitch and its hole you’ve just made.
6. After you’ve thread that through, you want to go back to the same hole you made in step 4 and thread through that.
7. Now repeat steps 3 -6 until you’ve finished.

Note - Watching videos may be easier for some people as visuals are always better, here is a link to a very good video.

This is a very easy stitch, that you probably know unconsciously.

Like before, I’m teaching you the stitch first.

1. Thread your needle and knot your thread.
2. Coming from the underside of the fabric thread the needle through.
3. Around ½ an inch forward, poke the needle through the face of your fabric.
4. Now, super easy just repeat steps 1-2 until you’ve finished!

Note - Watching videos may be easier for some people as visuals are always better, here is a link to a very good video. ( not the video below)

So that we can have perfect cuts, we are going to need to draw a stencil for our piece.

This may look like some huge instructions but they repeat the same things and are many instructions in one 😅.

We’ll start by drawing the stomach stencil.

1. Lay a big sheet of paper over your jacket.
2. Draw a semicircle of roughly how big you want your Totoro stomach patch to be. ( it may depend on the size and style of your jacket.)

3. Following your lines Cut your stomach patch stencil out.

Tip - To make sure your semi-circle is even, you can fold it in half and trim out the zagged edges and inconsistencies.

Now for the eyes stencil:

it’s much easier to use a reference picture of Totoro to make these eyes.

1. Totoro's eyes are really circular so first start drawing a circle. I didn’t use a protractor to make it even as the unevenness adds some life.
2. Looking at a reference I draw another circle on the inside of his eye to represent the iris.
3. Then draw another small circle on the inside of the iris to be the eye shine.

This is the easiest part, The nose stencil

1. Draw a semi-circle.
2. Add another small semi-circle to the right corner to make the light shine.
3. Cut out your piece

The Totoro stomach design,

These patches are basically stretched out triangles. So this is quite easy.

1. On your Totoro stomach patch draw some loose triangles in the pattern of a pyramid. So there is one more triangle on the layer under the layer above (sounds complicated but isn’t, its like stacking cards)

Note - I played around with this, and experimented with different sizes of triangles and shapes.

1. From the Stomach stencil, cut out your new Totoro grey patches stencils.

Really simple and easy we'll be using our stencils to cut out our fabric pieces.

1. Using sewing pins, pin your Totoro stomach stencil onto the fury fabric.
2. Using a sharp pair of fabric scissors following the stencil and cut out the fabric.
3. Now pin your little grey Totoro stomach design stencils to your fabric.
4. Pinch your fabric around the middle of where the stencil is and cut through to make a little hole. ( see picture)
5. Now like before, following your stencil you want to cut the fabric out.
6. For the rest of your Totoro patches repeat steps 4 - 6

I hand sewed this as the fabric is just far too thick for my machine… Arrrgggh! I couldn’t even secure the foot down properly.

This will be a running stitch if you don’t know how to do this go back to step 2…

1. We'll be quartering up our thread so folding it in half then half again so make sure you get a piece of thread long enough to be folded.
2. Now you want to fold it onto itself twice. So now you have a group of four strings.
3. knot the end of your threads and thread your needle.
4. Pin your cut out Totoro stomach onto the fabric,
5. Now continue sewing your runners stitch along the perimeter of the fabric. Securing it onto the jacket

Note - luckily I had enough thread to get me through the whole perimeter but if not, just knot the end of your finishing thread and cut it. rethread some new string and continue.

For your Totoro stomach patch cutouts, it’s the same concept.

1. Do runners stitch over the perimeter of the white part of the triangles.
2. Make sure you are close enough to the edge and pull your thread tight to sinch the edges and pull the fluff up.
3. Now that you've finished your stitch, finish it off with a knot on the underside.

To print the stencil on our embroidery fabric you will need to:

1. Put your Totoro eye stencil on the back of the embroidery hoop and fabric.
2. As the fabric is thin, you should be able to see the Totoro eyes enough to trace. It if not hold it up to alight. Now trace it using a pencil very lightly.

Filling in our embroidery

1. To embroider we'll be using the backstitch, this is good as it can be used to colour our fabrics
2. Around the outside of your Totoro eyes stencil, use black fabric to make an outline
3. Once finished fill in our eye by using the backstitch going up layer by layer.

Notes - It's very hard to explain this, this is where my dyslexia kicks in. Here is such an amazing tutorial for you guys to watch, that teaches you exactly how to do this:

To finish your embroidery you will need to:

1. Add super glue or in my case nail glue to the surrounding area of your embroidered patch. You can use fabric glue I just didn’t have any on hand.
2. Then cut off the access fabric surrounding your patch making sure to cut close to the backstitch border.

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Finally 😊😊😊😊 We are done...

Thanks, everyone for staying to the end of this instructable.

Please give me lots of constructive criticism comments I really want to learn how to best improve my craft.

I hope you try out this craft and tell me how it went.

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