Winter Reindeer: Free 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 - scroll down to the bottom of this post for the pattern!

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.

This pattern is for non commercial use only: you can use it to stitch as many reindeer as you want for yourself or as gifts, but please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire post or share my pattern on your site. Thanks!

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