Beaver

This past week, I finished up a few more Menagerie critters. 

This one is a Beaver.

It's a classic Menagerie critter in that I was able to use the base templates in their usual layout: body, head, belly, ears, arms, tail, lower limbs. 

Thus very little adaptation, just some new shapes for the characteristic Beaver-parts.

Let's walk through them, so you can make this guy, too. 

First, the upper limbs: straight template arms with claws. Not as small-and-numerous as the Fox's or Dinosaur's, but not as long as the Dragon's. Somewhere in-between.

Next, the lower limbs: webbed and paddle-like. Beavers have five toes, not three, so this is artistic license here. Also practicality: it's much easier to stuff fewer wider toes than more numerous skinnier ones.

The tail - the Beaver's signature feature. This was interfaced between the  black fleece layers, then quilted in diamonds. I am always surprised at how little of what I observe about animals is actually accurate. A beaver's tail, for instance, is about half the length of the body. Before I'd actually researched it, I thought it was much shorter.

The ears are Lion ears, and the cheeks and teeth are attached by applique. Those dots on the cheeks are french knots, suggesting (non-existent) whiskers.

I used a medium brown faux fur from JoAnn which didn't shed much at all. 

Super easy to make!