Leather Totoro Flex Frame Pouch

Ghibli movies have been on my mind because I've been rewatching them during Ghibli fest, where they replay Ghibli films in local theaters every year. I was recently playing with a leather flex frame shark pouch I made (original pattern by The Parchment Leather) when I had the thought that I could adopt the same flex frame idea for a custom Totoro pouch. I began sketching out the Totoro brain child on junk mail and welp, the rest is history.

1. Leather
2. I picked from a batch of scrap leather that I had purchased from this etsy listing when I first started learning leathercraft, so I pulled leather from this stack.
3. Thickness: I'd recommend 1.2 - 1.6mm thick (3-4oz) leather, medium to soft temper.
4. Colors: I used grey (body), off-white (belly and eyes), black (eyes and nose) green (leaves), and pink (cheeks). Substitute as you see fit of course.
5. Lining: I usually use thin faux leather as a lining. In this particular instance, I actually had a thin piece of leather that I picked up in 2018 on a trip in Italy... I had picked it up on a whim before I even got into leathercraft and figured "hey, lemme bring home some scrap Italian leather."
6. 120cm flex frame
7. I chose this size because I wanted this pouch large enough to fit my phone and keys
8. Pricking irons
9. I used French style, 3.85mm ones like these. At minimum, you'll need one with 2 teeth since there's curvature. More teeth is better for efficiency and for the straight edges.
10. Xacto knife for cutting out leather
11. I've try skiving knives for cutting out complex shapes, but I never got the technique down and just rely on a standard xacto
12. I like using a rotary cutter for long straight cuts, and that's what I used for the rectangular panels
13. Thread
14. I used 0.6mm Ritza tiger thread, in grey and silver. They actually came with leather stitching needles too which is nice.
15. Needles for leather
16. Leather needles have a blunter tip than regular sewing needles so you don't sew through thread while saddle stitching
17. Ecoweld - contact adhesive for leather
18. Circular punches
19. I used 6mm for the eyes, pupils, and cheeks
20. Scissors
21. Printed pattern (see 4 pages of the patterns sized for 8.5x11" paper attached to this step)
22. masking tape to tape the patterns to your leather as you cut
23. dotted lines are guidelines for stitching, solid lines are where to cut
24. Lighter or thread singer
25. 2x Ø1" key rings and a bag strap

As far as leather work goes, this is a pretty simple and uninvolved project - the main difficulty is that it has quite a few pieces that need to get stitched together, but otherwise it doesn't involve complicated techniques. Definitely not a "first leathercrafting project" though. Practice on scrap leather: practice cutting out leather, getting clean cuts, using punches, and stitching.

There are plenty of leathercrafting basics tutorials online (I also just learned by watching a ton of videos) but I'll link the main ideas of what you should know.

1. This is a great video on saddle stitching leather (goes into pricking holes also). I've never actually used a groover like you'll see in the video, and I didn't find it necessary for the soft pebbled leather I was using.
2. This is a closeup of classic saddle stitching
3. This is by far the best video I've found to explain cross stitching. Everything in the pouch is just saddle stitched except for connecting the two body panels at the seam and attaching the two long teardrop side panels.

Start by cutting out all the pieces of the pattern on paper (Cut along solid lines. Dashed lines will be explained in a sec) so you can trace them onto your leather.

For the body, cut out the grey body front and back panels and 2x body lining. Glue the linings to the body panels with contact adhesive with wrong sides facing, as shown in the first picture above.

I've added 2 dashed lines along the top edge of the body panel pattern. Fold over the top edge until the two dashed lines are aligned, and saddle stitch along the line. This becomes a channel that you can feed the flex frame through. Do this for only the back panel for now, and the finished result should look like the second picture above.

The front body panel will get ears stitched onto it. Begin by cutting out 2 grey ears, shown in the first picture above (note that the ears pictured are shorter than the ones in the pattern. I lengthened the ears in the pattern after learning from my first prototype). On the grey body front panel, make sure you have the two 15mm cuts (second image above) for the ears to go through.

This is the tricky part, so please feel free to comment if you have questions. I didn't like the way I did my ears in my version so I redesigned how to attach them for more stability and less floppiness.

Third image above: Mark the midline of the ear on the "wrong" side lightly with a pen (shown in the graphic in green) and then insert the ear through one of the cuts ("wrong" sides both facing in the same direction, shown in the fourth image - the relative positioning of the ear protrusion to the leather is not right in the picture because as I mentioned, I lengthened the ears for this tutorial). Make sure the midline you drew on the ear is about 16mm above the cut. Stitch the ear to the body panel at the two dashed lines: about 3mm below the midline and 3mm above the cut.

Now that you've stitched the ear in two places to the body panel, bend the ear in half and slide it through the hole as shown in the first and second pictures. On the "wrong" side of the leather, you'll see something like the third picture above, except that your folded portion will be longer than mine. You can see why I lengthened the ears for this tutorial: I realized that the short ears tend to pivot on this single line of stitching I originally had.

Do the same steps for the second ear to finally get two cutely protruding ears shown in the fourth picture. Saddle stitch along the long dotted lines to create the tube for the flex frame to insert through. See fifth and sixth pictures above for what it should look like, front side and lining side. On the lining side, you should have two lines of stitching underneath each ear.

Now test that the flex frame can be slide through even with the ears installed. It should be a snug fit but not too tight that you can't shove the flex frame through.

To finish off the ears, use contact adhesive to glue the folded ear halves together and saddle stitch along the perimeter, shown in the seventh picture.

To make the belly, cut out the white belly panel with the boomerang shapes and cut the grey boomerang shapes. The grey pieces go into the cutouts made on the white so it's important to get the shapes as close as possible so that they fit together with minimal gaps. To make the cutouts in belly piece, I used punches since they make cleaner curved cuts than I can with an xacto (see second image), and then connected the dots with the xacto to get the boomerang shape.

Once the pieces are cut, align the white belly piece on the grey body panel with the ears, use contact adhesive to keep it attached, and stitch it on (third picture). Once that's stitched on, use contact adhesive to glue the grey pieces in their corresponding cutouts (fourth picture).

The face is pretty self explanatory: cut out the eyes, pupils (use 6mm or similar sized punch), nose, and cheeks, and glue them in place. Then stitch a few stray white whiskers underneath the eyes. Totoro's face is now completed!

To attach the bag straps to the pouch, I designed these leaf features. Start by using contact adhesive and gluing the leaves in half, making sure to leave a loop at the bend so that you can thread the 1" key ring through. Then stitch along the leaf pattern to attach the leaf loop to the back body panel as shown in the first image. Stitch in the direction sketched in the second picture above, so that you can do the full leaf shape with one thread. Repeat for the second leaf as well.

Now that your front and back body panels are done, use a cross stitch to secure the two ends (without the flex frame channels). Note that the panels shown in the pictures on this step don't have the Totoro face or leaf features because originally I sewed these together before I did the detailing... 20/20 in hindsight, it's much easier to do the detail work when you're not handling a long panel of leather haha!

Almost done! The last step is to attach the two teardrop shaped side panels.

Start by cutting out the two side panels and the two corresponding lining shapes. Use contact adhesive to attach the lining to the leather panels, wrong sides facing each other like shown in the first image.

I used cross stitching to attach the side panels. My tip for you here is to start at the bottom of the teardrop, in the middle, and sew up one body panel. Then go back to the bottom of the teardrop, in the middle, and sew up the other body panel. That way you can be sure that the teardrop is properly centered between the two body panels, as shown in the second picture.

My other tip is in the third picture: for the curved surface, you'll want to "sew twice" some holes on the side lining because you have more holes pricked on the body panel compared to the side panel. That's because the body panel is the "outside" perimeter so there's more length. To compensate, push the needle into the previous hole in the lining side to "sew into it twice" (compare third vs fourth pictures). You don't reallllllly need to do this but it looks neater in the end. It's only helpful on the curved section of the teardrop; not needed on the straight portion.

Now just slide the flex frame through the top channels, add the two key rings to the back leaf loops, clip on a bag strap, and you've got a new Totoro pouch to carry around! I'm overall pretty pleased with how this came out. Things went mostly according to my napkin sketches, though I did make tweaks here and there to improve the stability in the pattern released in this tutorial.

Feel free to leave comments if you run into questions, and enjoy!