Winter Reindeer: Christmas Embroidery Pattern

The festive crafting continues!

 

A couple of years ago I made some reindeer Christmas cards (super fun!) and thought "ooh, this design would look lovely embroidered"... and I was totally right. I'm delighted with how this little guy turned out!

The deer pattern fits nicely inside a 7 inch embroidery hoop.

I stitched my reindeer on royal blue felt. I traced the pattern onto white tissue paper with a ballpoint pen and roughly cut around it (leaving at least 1cm of paper around the deer). I then tacked the tissue paper to the felt with some long stitches of sewing thread and embroidered the design. 

I used white embroidery thread (floss), sewing with three of the six strands in the thread. I used French knots for his eyes and sewed the rest of the pattern with backstitch, sewing small stitches to create smooth curves. I used backstitch for the deer's nose but you could use satin stitch instead. 

For added fun, why not sew the nose in red thread?

After I'd finished stitching the deer I removed the tacking stitches and carefully tore away the tissue paper to reveal the design.

Then it was time to add the details!

I added an inner line of backstitch to the reindeer's blanket, then stitched a zig-zag line of single stitches and a scattering of French knot dots. If you were stitching several of these as gifts you could sew a different pattern on each blanket, making each gift unique. 

Then I sewed the wobbly line of the ground with backstitch, and filled in the space above it with snowflakes sewn from three overlapping stitches. I started my snowflake stitching around the deer then worked outwards, sewing different size snowflakes to create a natural look.

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