My Neighbor Totoro Project #2: Catbus

Hello again!
So last time I showed you how I made Totoro. I ended up making yet another doll / pillow from the same movie for the same friend! I think this was a present for a combination of life events, and I knew she would love this. This time, I made Catbus! (if you don't know what Catbus looks like, please Google it as there are so many references out there! Or better yet: watch the movie, you will love it!)

Again, I went shopping for fabric... at least this time I knew what I needed, the wool was just perfect, I just had to find the right colours. Catbus has various shades of brown and a bright yellow. The brown was easy but I couldn't find yellow anywhere... In the end I opted for yellow felt which worked as well. Not the tiny squares of craft felt, no the proper felt on a roll. It seemed stronger, and the colour was perfect.

Sadly this time there was no tutorial, but I did find a pillow on ebay that served as inspiration for this project. Ok, I mostly copied it... Mostly because I had no idea where to start on making a catbus. Would I make it with all the legs like an actual cat, or more flat but with the legs just dangly? This inspiration came just right. And this is it, the result:

I must say that I absolutely love how this came out! 

I still had some cream wool leftover from Totoro so I could use that, and I just used some pink craft felt for the nose. Don't you just love this enormous smile??

Here you see the yellow felt as the windows. These were so easy to sew on, fairly square without any funny curves or anything.

The legs turned out a tad too long IMHO. I think the bottom beige piece should have been a bit shorter. Oops... It's basically a rectangle made out of three long pieces of beige-brown-beige, then I sewed on the dividing lines and stuffed with fibrefill. Same for the tail. 

You can't see the back, which is a good thing as I actually ran out of fabric. Unwilling to go back to the shop for what would have been a FQ, I used another brown wool I had leftover. Close enough in colour of not in softness, it did the trick. Its the bottom anyway so you can't really see this.

My friend loved it :) This time she knew when I would give it to her, so no reaction photos, but she really liked it so I'm happy!!