Handmade vs. Purchased Goods III: Taggie Toy

I think I mentioned having made this in an earlier post, but here's the final product:

After committing to the project I started to question what the point of this kind of toy is.  I understand that it has visual interest, but for a baby, so does the whole world and I would argue that looking at scenes from the real world (especially outside and daily home life scenes) would have more visual appeal.  It also has various textures and baby can manipulate it, but so do the thousands of other cloth objects that I have around the house.  I guess it was made with love.  The point here would be that as far as being a high priority, awesome worth-the-time-to-make baby project, this one ended up ranking pretty low.

The creation of this little number is pretty obvious.  Sew strips of fabric around the edges of another piece of fabric.  I used a square piece of fleece about 12" by 12" and then stitched a circle in gathering stitch in the middle and pulled tight for the central knobbin.  

I had considered making the center have a face, but that seemed a little creepy for my taste.  Maybe that would be more appropriate for someone with more advanced embroidery skills...

Anyhoo, as discussed before I think I really decided to make this when I was caught up in the fury of inspiration at looking at availble baby products on Esty and Amazon thinkin 'oh, I could make that, I could make that too!' and I didn't really question how much I liked the project until I had committed to it.

This is the photo I have saved on my computer which I believe is from someone's Esty site.  When I started saving inspiring photos I just put them in a folder in my documents (I don't think pintrest had caught on yet and I still don't have a pinterest but this is making me realize that maybe I should if I'm gonna reference other people's stuff on my blog), so I don't have a source for this one, but if you really want it try searching for baby toys on Etsy.