The Great Serpent of Ronka plush template

Great serpent of ronka plush toy

Want to make your own version of The Great Serpent of Ronka!? Download + print the template files and follow the instructions below. It’s a very simple plush to make but please comment if something in unclear and I’ll do my best to improve the instructions. I’ve aimed it towards super beginners so if you’ve made a soft toy before you can probably disregard most of it!

Materials

  • Minky or fleece:
    • Orange (I used Shannon Plush – Mango)
    • Brown/Tan (I used Shannon Plush – Taupe. Cappuccino is very similar)
    • A small amount of pink (I used Shannon Plush – Coral)
  • Self adhesive white felt for teeth (or normal fleece/felt, fabric glue, and a steady hand)
  • 1 pair of black plastic safety eyes – 10mm
  • Polyfibre stuffing. Old pillowcase stuffing will do if you don’t have this already.
  • Sewing needle, beige thread, ideally pins to keep everything in place while you sew
  • (optional) Have an embroidery machine? DragonsGarden has kindly shared the embroidery files for their alteration of this pattern. Download the embroidery files and additional instructions here. Ignore the plastic eyes, pink minky and white felt if you go down this route, as well as any instructions later that involve cutting a hole for the mouth, etc. If you’re using an embroidered face you’ll need to do these steps first before the instructions below.

Instructions

1. Cut out your fabric pieces. Line on the template is the sewing line, so leave a 10mm seam around all pieces. The shapes for the sides all look very similar so label them if needed.

Roughly labelled pieces and one cut out with seam.

2. Sew together the side and front stripes, so you now have three big body pieces

I changed the end brown piece for the serpent front, which is why it looks different in this photo compared to the template

3. Cut your mouth hole (leaving a seam here too!) and sew in the pink mouth. This can be fiddly to get all the seams lined up and the mouth taut (I’ll add pictures soon)

4. Now sew all three body pieces together. I started at the top of the head – attached both sides to the front, then sewed up the back. Remember to leave a small gap somewhere inconspicuous so you can turn the whole plush inside out.

One of the trickiest bits is to get all the stripes lined up as you sew. You have more control over this if you’re hand sewing. Whether you’re hand or machine sewing, pin the pieces together first carefully matching up the stripes.

You can see the seams, plus the placement of the teeth and eyes in this photo.

5. Position the eyes, cut two very small holes and push through.

6. Stuff that chonk. Really stuff him – as much as you can get in. Use something long like a paintbrush handle to push it all the way in. If he’s lumpy, or the top of the head is still pointy instead of round, there’s still room for more stuffing.

7. Sew up the hole so the body is complete. Sew, stuff and attach tail. Add sticky teeth.

Tail position

8. SCREE!