It all began with the Totoro teapot cozy attempt one (pictured above). I had an acorn shaped teapot that I decided lost too much heat when seeping my tea, which gave me the idea to make a cozy. I didn't decide to pick a Totoro pattern for a while but considering I am going with a grey scale for the kitchen decor it just made sense. For my friends teapot I decided to go all out and come up with something ten times better than the original.
This is the poor faceless Totoro without the removable base or leaf spout cover. I find it easier to work my way from the top down when I am piecing it all together. I should have taken a picture without the ears or leaves but I didn't think about it at the time. Inspiration had struck so I try to keep working in hopes of not losing my vision for the finished project.
To cover the knob from the teapot lid I made one large leaf and as much detail as possible. The second leaf is actually hidden (or you can say it was used as a base), it has a hole large enough for the knob and is thick enough to as a good base. I did leave some opening between the two leaves to aid in removal of the cover. The ears are actually hollow and have no problem staying up in place. The eyes and nose were tricky with placement on this teapot since I wanted them to be a little lower but was unable to do so. I did leave the whiskers out on this particular design as well as a mouth (after all I was trying to get a similar look to one of the pictures I had downloaded).
For the stomach I actually started out with a typical circle pattern and ended the last two row by stopping at a flat edge of the circle (so to speak), chaining, turning and working back to the start. This gave me a nice flat edge and kept the circle shape large than if I had just kept with the set circle pattern. On most circle patterns for crocheting you tend to end up with a hexagon or larger so I utilized one of the sides for a flat edge if that helps with clarification. For the little grey peaks I ended up measuring out the center and took a grey sharpie and lightly drew out the center top peak. After that, the rest of the peaks were easy and didn't require any special placement other than eyeing it out. Then I just double stitched each side to help give it more definition.
The leaf spot cover was easy I just crocheted two leaves, sewed them together first and then pinned them to the opening and only sewed one side to the base. Creating the base for the spout was tricky but I ended up trying to increase in certain areas to give it the correct shape. The cover which the leaf attaches to was even more difficult for me to figure out at first. I tried chaining to connect to the other side and fill in what I wanted while working on the teapot base, but that ended up failing. So I disconnected my yarn, marked where the cover needed to start on each side with place markers and filled it in from there.
The removable base was the best way to cover up the bottom of the pot while allowing Totoro to somewhat keep his round shape in tact. I made two circles the size of the base crocheted them together with a slip stitch all the way around and then proceeded to crochet up to form a small lip. I then crocheted a bunch of full and half leaves to sew around the bottom to make it more interesting. The removable base while stylish and adding to the overall look actually was designed to function as a heat pad.
Here is the finished project and yes I have another puppy photo-bombing me. I wanted a picture that showed the true colors for this project and this one was actually the closest. The reason Natsume is in the picture is because she wouldn't get out of the frame she practically insisted ( and she believes that anything crocheted is meant to be a toy for her).