Tablecloth into dress vol. 4 - Totoro edition

Hello everyone,
I made yet another tablecloth into a dress. Because tablecloth dresses are awesome, right?

So I found this very light violet / lavender tablecloth at the Salvation Army secondhand store for 4 euros:

(It looks gray here for some reason - stupid camera.)

So I again chopped the ends off (like previously when I made a similar dress) to make the skirt part and used the middle part to make the top:

I used a raglan-sleeve t-shirt as the model for the top, and took advantage of the already hemmed sides so I wouldn't have to hem the sleeves at all - yay for laziness! :D

Aside from the raglan sleeve top, I pretty much followed Annika Victoria's amazing tutorial, like I have done ever since I discovered the tutorial last year. Dress-making made easy.

So then the dress was done!

(Get your act together, camera! With flash the color now looks too dark... *grumble*)

...But the dress was still missing something.

Oh yeah, pockets!

I have seen some awesome pocket designs on the internet, so I decided I could totally make Totoro pockets for my dress. Somehow I thought that they would fit on this particular dress well.

I found a stencil...

What's up with those ears, though?

...and drew it on paper which I held against the screen of my laptop (because f*ck my printer). I also fixed the ears, haha. :D

I then cut the stencil out and placed it on a sleeve of a gray hoodie that was in my "for refashioning/scraps" pile.

I cut it out, making sure I cut through both sides of the sleeve to get two pieces. I then placed these pieces on scraps of the dress fabric (aka tablecloth) I had left, right sides together, and cut around again.

I then sewed around the edges, leaving a small gap at the bottom so I could turn the pieces inside out after sewing them.

On the left turned right way round and ironed, on the right sewn but not yet turned.

I then cut out the stomach circle and placed it on folded cream-color fabric scraps, then cut two pieces out.

I painted the whatever-those-things-on-his-stomach-are with fabric paint and marker:

I drew and colored in the eyes, nose and mouth:

I used fabric glue to attach the stomach circles on the bodies, and ironed over the pieces to set the paint once it had dried.

Ta-dah!

I then figured out the placement of the pieces on the dress, tried the dress on to see if the pockets were in a good spot, and sewed them on close to the edge of the pockets, leaving the head part unsewn.

I sewed snap buttons on the backside of the ears and on corresponding spots on the dress to keep the pockets nice and neat when I'm not using them:

And here's the final result:

And here's me rocking my new, awesome tablecloth dress:

(The most accurate depiction of the color, except it's not quite as blue IRL.)

I had to do some twirling. :D But c'mon, this dress was made for twirling.

***

So, that kind of a DIY sewing project this time. What do you think of the pockets and the dress altogether? ^_^

love,
scoundrel