Hello!! I’m here with a tutorial today that I’m really excited about! 3 years ago, I made a Totoro costume for Yuki and it was a huge hit with Totoro fans around the world. Since then I’ve been getting regular emails about custom orders for costumes or selling the pattern for it, but I don’t do either. I figured the least I can do is a tutorial for the costume so people can try their hand at making one themselves! Continue reading
Well, Halloween is over! All that preparation and it’s gone in the blink of an eye! We had a great time taking Yuki on her first real trick-or-treat outing and she wore her costume for most of it, so that was a big success. Did you all have a great Halloween?
Today I’m super excited to be sharing a bunch of costumes made by readers!
When I made the Totoro costume for my daughter last Halloween, I was excited, but figured most people would have no clue who or what she was. While we definitely had to answer the question more than a few times, it quickly became an internet hit. It is, by far, my most popular post EVER. Totoro has a big following!
When people started showing interest in the costume, I thought I might make a pattern for it or sell custom costumes, but I did neither. I didn’t even make a tutorial for it. But as Halloween approached, I started getting emails from people who were making the costume just based off of my pictures and brief description. Some of them had questions, but they all drafted their own patterns and they all came out sooooo incredible! Each of them unique in their own way. I was thrilled when I started seeing pictures of the finished costumes and even more so when they said I could share them here on the blog.
As you guys may know, I love Halloween and costumes are probably one of my most favorite things to create. Unfortunately, my daughter does not feel the same way! She doesn’t like costumes and it makes me feel like I should give up on trying to get her to dress up. But when I see that my costumes have inspired other people to create for themselves and their families it makes me so so happy. Some of them are sewing for the first time or for the first time in years and I think that’s pretty incredible! And as for Yuki, I won’t approach her with another costume until she’s ready (and hopefully she’s ready by next Halloween)!
Anyways, let’s start the Totoro parade!!
Ina made this costume for her son’s first Halloween and I cannot get over the cuteness!! See more of her beautiful pictures here.
Venus of Suburbia Soup made this adorable costume for her daughter. She calls it Totoro on a diet – haha! But I think it fits her daughter perfectly. While you check out her blog, you definitely must see her Hoodie Scarf tutorial!
Bree, momma blogger of Shark and Crow, made this for her daughter and it was her first sewing project EVER. Can you believe it!? (My first sewing project was 2 pieces of fabric sewn into a rectangular pocket. And it sucked.) More pics of the cute costume here.
Raquel sent me pictures of her son, Javier, representing Totoro all the way from Spain! Look at that lil belly!
Elisabeth made this for her son and I love how she stuffed the tummy and nose and the exposed zipper in the back looks great!
Sarah made TWO Totoro costumes, one of the big gray Totoro and one of the medium blue one. How cute is this sibling picture!?
Kristina made this costume for her youngest even though she hadn’t sewn since 7th grade Home Ec class. She borrowed a sewing machine from a friend. Didn’t it come out amazing?
And last in the Totoro parade, is this incredible costume that Sandie made. She used my hood and leaf as inspiration but created the rest of the costume on her own and don’t you just LOVE the soot ball bag and those shoe covers?! It’s also so awesome to see a slightly older kid as Totoro. So super cute.
The Rain Cloud costume was a tutorial from this year and there were a few created by readers for both kids and adults! This costume is a bit more simple in construction, but equally as cute, and it was fun to see some pop up so quickly after I posted the tutorial.
Kristina of Sir Bubbadoo created this adorable costume for her son and he LOVED it!
Rachel, of Stitched Together, made her daughter into a little gray rain cloud and I especially love how two of her older kids helped with painting, stuffing and decision making!.jpg "stitched together rain cloud")
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Kady, a children’s librarian, said her costume was totally appropriate for her job and super comfy too!
And last, but not least, one of my staff members and her friend dressed up as a couple of clouds for a Halloween party! Maddee (left) is a rain cloud and Laura (right) is a snow cloud! I love the variation!
Thank you to all of the talented people who shared their beautiful costume creations with me and allowed me to share them on the blog with you! I really loved seeing every single one.
If you ever want to share your photos with me OR have any questions, please feel free to email me anytime (see contact tab above)! And remember there is a you & mie flickr group and I’d love to see your creations added to the group as well.
Now that Halloween has passed, I know that the holiday season will creep up on us so quickly. Can you believe it’s November already!? Here in the US, today is election day, so if you’re a registered voter – PLEASE GO VOTE! It’s truly one of our greatest rights and responsibilities. I know I’ll be anxious until the day is over, but I’m hoping for good news 🙂
So get out there and vote and have a great day!
Today, one of my old tutorials for a felt flower pin is posted on the Mollie Makes blog! Mollie Makes is a lifestyle and craft magazine for people who live and love handmade. Their magazine is a BIG DEAL so I’m extremely excited to have my tutorial posted on their blog.
I’m also a little embarrassed because I made this tutorial a long time ago (you know, like a whole 8 months ago) and my tutorial photos are pretty bad (that polka dot background and horrible indoor nighttime lighting!? Ugh!). Anyways, hop on over to Mollie Makes to check out my tutorial if you haven’t seen it before, and definitely check out their Projects link for tons of inspiration for fall projects.
Also, with Halloween right around the corner, I know that a lot of people have been working on their own handmade Totoro costumes based off the one I made last year.
I feel bad because I said I would try to make a pattern for the costume by this Halloween and I never did. I didn’t even do a tutorial for the costume, but people are giving it a shot anyways, and I’ve already received pictures of some really incredible Totoro costumes that readers have made!
If you’ve made a Totoro costume (or are making one right now), I would LOVE to see a picture of your finished costume! Eventually I want to do a round up here on the blog sharing all of your Totoro inspired creations, so please email me your photos (or a link to the photo if you’ve posted it on your blog or in an online photo album). When you send me your photo please let me know if I can share it here on the blog and any links you’d like me to include (if you have a blog or something).
Remember, you can always add pictures to the you & mie flickr group also! I love to see what you guys have made using my tutorials or projects for inspiration. It makes me so so happy! 🙂
In other announcements, there are a lot of exciting series coming up over the next few months that I get to be a part of. Today, Jen of iCandy Handmade announced their upcoming series, Basic Bodice Design.
In this series, all of the guests are going to be taking a very basic dress bodice design and making adjustments to create totally different looks. And there will be tons of tutorials showing you how! There will also be linky parties so that you can share your creations too! Go check out the announcement. The series starts in mid-November and runs till mid-January.
How is your Halloween prep coming? Are you making costumes? I’d love to hear about what crafty projects or decorations you’re working on. Hideko convinced me to make another costume for Yuki (since she doesn’t like the rain cloud one) but I’m really scared that she will refuse to wear this one too. Here’s a little sneak peek though.
Thank you for stopping by! 🙂
Yay, it’s done! My “movie inspired” outfit is finally done – better late than never, right? When Project Run & Play announced the challenges for this season and one of them was “Going to the Movies” it didn’t take me very long to decide what I wanted to do. I mean, the options are ENDLESS, but I wanted to stick with something simple and make her an outfit I thought she’d be able to wear regularly. And since the Totoro costume I made for Yuki last Halloween was such a huge hit, I knew something from the same movie would be appreciated. So that’s how I decided to recreate Mei’s outfit from the movie “となりのトトロ” or “My Neighbor Totoro.” It’s a Japanese animated classic by Hayao Miyazaki and I’m obsessed with all of his movies. So uhh, if you haven’t seen this movie, I think you should just go see it right now.
ANYWAYS, Mei is a 4 year old and the character is such a perfect match for Yuki’s personality! Even though Yuki’s not even 2 yet, she’s got a lot of Mei’s fun, rough-and-tumble, stubborn personality and even how Mei tries so hard to keep up with her older sister. Yuki loves playing with other kids too, even though she’s such a little runt compared to them. I’m not going to give you a whole synopsis of the movie, you can look it up or watch a trailer, or better yet, just go watch the film if you haven’t seen it already.
So here are some screen shots from the movie:
And our little Mei-chan:
One of the most memorable scenes is when Mei is playing by herself in the yard and she spots a little peculiar creature running through the grass. She tries to follow the chibi Totoro, and it tries to run away. We had fun recreating that scene during our photo shoot (and I had a little fun with photo editing too :)).
Got him!!
So I made three pieces for this outfit. The blouse and the shorts are from the Oliver + S pattern, Puppet Show Tunic and Shorts. I don’t have a lot of experience making buttoned collared shirts, so I thought using a pattern would be a good way to learn.
The thing about a good Oliver + S pattern is that it is pretty tedious and takes a lot of time. This, of course, results in a really high quality piece of clothing, but one of the things I love about making kids clothing is how quickly you can whip something up. That’s just me being impatient though. It’s really good that I’m learning how to do things the “right” way. I made the shirt in 2T size which is HUGE on Yuki, but that means she’ll be able to wear it for a long time. I used an embroidered white fabric just to make it a bit more interesting and added a button in the front just to make it look like the one in the movie. I’ll probably take it off since it serves no purpose.
The shorts are so cute! These came together very quickly and I want to make a few more of these for sure. I made them white to match Mei’s bloomers, but I’m not sure it was a very practical move. They make for some adorable summer shorts though!
The red jumper is a simple lined bodice that I adjusted from the Every Little Thing Tunic (recognize the lining fabric?) and a circle skirt. I added some fun yellow flower buttons on the back. This piece came together the fastest!
I also made the little white chibi Totoro right before our photo shoot out of some scraps of white fleece (from the original Totoro costume!) and tied little pom poms to her hair rubber bands to match Mei’s.
This blue Totoro is a stuffed animal – I didn’t make it.
Did you spot the creeper Totoro!?
And speaking of creepers, check out this paparazzi sneaking up on an unsuspecting girl.
Phew, that was a lot of photos! Now that I’ve made a Totoro costume and a Mei outfit, all that’s really left for me to make is the Cat bus! Haha, NOT!
See the full Totoro Costume Tutorial HERE!
**I do not make Totoro Costumes for sale. ** 
*UPDATE: Since this post has been getting a lot of views, I figure I should at least add one photo of the finished hood. This post was published with photos from her first fitting and after these were taken, I decided to add the whiskers and the leaf. You can read more about that in this tutorial. Hope you like it!* This year, I really wanted to make Yuki’s costume, but we could not decide for a long time what she should be. We threw around some ideas, but none of them really excited me. I’ve had this idea of dressing Yuki up as Totoro for a long time (since she was born?), but was worried that no one would know what she was. But since I couldn’t think of anything better, I decided to go for it. So what if I would have to explain a hundred times who she was supposed to be! At least she would be adorable and original . . . right? Well, I finished most of the costume EARLY this year (meaning not the night before or morning of) and I’m a little unsure of how I feel about it. It came out better than I expected in some ways and not as cute as I imagined in other ways. In terms of the construction, I’m pleased. I’d never made a full body suit before. I’d never done an outfit with sleeves. Or made a hood. I just kinda made it up as I went along and it surprisingly worked out alright. Actually, better than alright, it came out looking pretty damn clean. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like Totoro to me. I think there is something wrong with the shape. Or the face. Or the proportions. I’m not quite sure and I might have to do a little more fiddling around (eek, that means I’m not actually done yet!), so maybe you can give me some feedback. I’m actually so impressed that I was able to get these pics of Yuki. She does NOT like hoods or hats. She generally rips them off the second we put them on. I’d tried to get this hat on her a few times while sewing to see if it fit and she hated it. She wouldn’t even let me get near her with it towards the end. But I realized that if you keep her really really distracted, she won’t notice it for quite awhile. So in case you don’t know who Totoro is, he is a character from a Japanese animated movie, となりのトトロ or My Neighbor Totoro. Although it’s a foreign film, there are quite a few people in the states that have seen it. Here he is! 
So cute, right?! Ok ok, so here’s our little Totoro . . .
Something about this costume reminds me of Max from Where the Wild Things Are. It’s well suited for making mischief!
I’m actually hoping that it’ll be cold on Halloween because this costume is made out of fleece and SUPER warm! I need to make some adjustments, but here are some of the basic details of the costume. Overall, it’s a pretty simple design that I based off of Yuki’s pajamas.
I zig zag stitched the chevrons on the chest and the white tummy to the rest of the suit. This was the first part of the costume I sewed, and the first thing I sewed on my brand new machine. It was dreamy 🙂
Instead of a zipper and snap in the front, I moved it to the back.
I also added elastic to the wrists and ankles and snaps to the legs for easy diaper changes.
For the hood, I used a hooded jacket to trace the shape. I cut two pieces and sewed them together, then made the snap collar thing with a long rectangle. I made ears (and the tail) with scraps of fleece and stuffed it with poly-fil. Then I hand sewed the ears and face on.
I want to add whiskers to the costume. Any ideas for what I can use?? I want to use something smaller and not as sharp as pipe cleaners. Maybe some yarn with fabric stiffener? I’m taking suggestions.
Now I gotta work on my costume. It’s going to be super simple this year. What are you going to be for Halloween??
you and mie 