Start of by making your applique pieces. I searched for Totoro coloring pages and found a good base. I cut it out for the shape and then tried to scale it down. I didn’t find anything good for the Catbus so I kind of free handed it. You can see all my shapes above. The trees were just long strips cut at different lengths.

Make iron on fabric out of the appropriate colors in sizes big enough to fit your shapes. If you’ve never made your own iron-ons see my iron-on tutorial, but basically you just iron heatbond onto the fabric, trace your shape, and then pull off the paper when you’re ready to use it.

Cut out your cape. To line it I just cut one sent out of the outter fabric and 1 out of the lining.

Take the outer fabric and position your applique pieces. Iron on.

Then top stitch to add details. I did the blacks of the eyes, whiskers, teeth and around all the edges of each piece in black and then I did the umbrella handle in white.

Sew the cape pieces together but don’t finish all the steps (you just want it to be one big piece of fabric) do the same with the lining. Then with right sides together sew the lining to the outer cape flip right side out and finish according to the instructions.

Wear or gift with abandoned Totoro geeky pride