Totoro!

My daughter is a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki's animated movie My Neighbor Totoro. Totoro is a big gray forest troll who befriends two girls and helps them in a time of crisis. It's a lovely little movie and I thought Ally might like to have a totoro of her own.

This Totoro plushie is about a foot tall and made from a super-soft gray felted lambswool sweater. All of his features are also made from recycled felted wool clothes. I did use polyfill stuffing in him as I thought my usual felted wool scraps would be too heavy for a toy.

The main body is machine stitched for durability. After I made the main body I appliqued Totoro's arms and fat tail with a blanket stitch. His arms and tail have additional stuffing (scrap polyfill quilt batting) in them for a dimensional effect.

Totoro's whiskers and claws are done in black embroidery floss. Really, he's constructed  using the same techniques I use with all of my primitive crafts. That Cheshire Cat smile just kept reminding me of my jack o'lantern penny rug. 

In the end, I ended up making what may be the world's first primitive plushie based on a anime character.