My Swissy, Jorgensen, has a favorite baby. This baby has been around since way before his time. It was also one of my first Swissy, Sebastian’s favorite babies. This toy is a large, round stuffed yellow duck. Our nickname for the him is Roundie. Sebastian loved to pick Roundie up and shake him and to run through the house carrying him in his mouth and jump on the bed with him. Try as I might I couldn’t find a picture of Sebastian with Roundie, but here are 2 pictures of Sebastian.
Roundie has seen a lot of wear and tear over the years and overtime the feet and wings have been removed and the beak covered by a piece of fabric where the beak was being pulled off. Jorgensen loves to lay on Roundie and hold him in his mouth. He sucks or lightly bites on Roundie as he lays on him, see picture below. It is really sweet and endearing; he will even make little whining sounds sometimes. He does this several times a day; we call it suckling. Perhaps the cutest thing is when Jorgensen sees Roundie across the room; his whole body lights up as he runs for his favorite baby.
Our puppies are a little wild especially together and love to play tug of war with Roundie. I have to repair holes on a somewhat regular basis. I also had to replace the blue fabric over the beak due to wear and tear. Although I HATE doing hand work and mending, I can’t imagine if Jorgensen didn’t have his Roundie so I always promptly mend him when there is a new hole. Here is a picture of Roundie with his new face; much prettier than the old blue face.
Since I know at some point Roundie will be beyond repair I started looking for a replacement to Roundie. I found a tutorial online for making a large fabric ball, similar to a beach ball. The knew fleece wouldn’t stand up well to my boys; I wanted something sturdy yet soft. I found some fake fur from Joann’s that I thought would work and since it was for making stuffed animals I knew it should be something that wouldn’t hurt the dogs. Before I did anything I washed the fabric to remove any chemicals or residue. The ball is made with 6 wedges; I made mine a little larger than those in the tutorial because it didn’t indicate how big the ball is in the end. Here is one of the wedges.
The ball was pretty easy to make. First I just sewed one straight seam between each wedge. I finished the ball and gave it to the dogs. About 15 minutes later they had a hole on one end, how discouraging!!! I got excited about getting it done; I forgot to reinforce it. So, I resewed all the seams with a small zig zag stitch and did 3 seams where each of the wedges come together. A serger would probably be better, but the zig zag worked just fine. The other thing I did different than the instructions was I sewed all the wedges together on the machine and sewed the end circles last by hand so the weakest spots were as limited as possible. The puppies are known for finding weak spots and pulling apart toys; so far the new Roundie has held up (about a week now).
My ball ended up being more like a pumpkin shape, but I am pleased with size and it doesn’t matter if it is a perfect circle anyway. My wedge was less tapered at the ends as shown in the tutorial. I think I could have just done 5 wedges using my template and it would have worked.
As soon as I put the new toy on the ground Jorgensen grabbed him and started suckling. I’m glad to know Jorgensen has another baby just in case Roundie gets to the point where he can no longer be fixed.
Although this post is mainly about Jorgensen, I can’t finish without at least one picture of his brother, Reginald, who also loves the New Roundie.
Sew long from the Quilter on Osage Hill!
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