Niffler: revisited

You probably remember our Niffler from a couple Christmases ago, but the photos in that post were grainy and dark and horrible. So while I had the camera out to photodocument the new Menagerie critters, I grabbed this guy out of Emily's room where he lives, and took some new photos.

To be honest, this Niffler was a fiddly sew, mainly because I was trying to get it to look as much like the thing in the movie as possible while working with whatever fabric I could find in local stores. The body, for instance, is supposed to be black but this dark brown was what was available. I used the base Menagerie template as is - for even the head, which looks very round but only because of the superthick fur (not fun to work with, but absolutely gorgeous to the touch and therefore worth every skipped stitch and almost-swear-word). 

I added padded feet to the ends of the legs and flat hands to the ends of the arms.

The muzzle - I honestly can't remember how I made this, except that I fiddled with the seam forever just to get it to curve upward like a smile. The Niffler in the movies was very cute and smiley, and if I'd sewn a straight seam, the thing would've looked deadpan. I also think there might've been some Stiffy used to shape the top of the muzzle along with the seaming,

so that it curved upward.

Here's the crazy pouch on its belly that holds jewelry. It's the same as the Kangaroo's pouch except that because the entire body is that glossy thick brown fur, you couldn't really see the opening unless you knew to look for it.

If you held him by his tail and shook him, all that glittery loot would fall out, like in the movies.