Embroidered Deer Ornament

The other day I bought this magazine off Ebay. It's an older Sew Somerset, I think from Spring of 2013. Anyway, one I didn't have. The cover intrigued me right away. I've been enamored with deer lately. Wanting to make things or paint things with deer. It gave me an idea for an ornament. Here's my best attempt at a tutorial.

I found this pattern on the internet:

However, I only wanted 'Bambi' for my pattern, it looked so much like the magazine's cover! I right clicked the image, saved to my computer. Then I pulled it up in PicMonkey (A free image altering site.) and cut off the image of the mother. I saved to my computer. I then pulled the image up in my Open Office (like WORD) program and enlarged it a bit to fit about a 1/4 of an 11x8 1/2" paper (around 5x6"). Then I printed.

I traced the deer image on cream felt, cutting it out. I then pinned it to hot pink felt and cut 1/8- 1/4" out from the cream, making a pink edge to the ornament. I set the pink aside.

Using light and medium brown embroidery thread (all 6 strings) I added french knots to 'Bambi's' back. So cute! It's been forever and a day since I did anything remotely resembling embroidery so I watched this youtube:

I added a bit of stitching to his ears and his face for an eye and I guess his nose. I think I would have liked the nose stitching a little closer to the end, but ehhh. It's fine.

After the deer was as complete as I wanted, I pinned the pink background to the deer. This hides all the stitching and knot tie offs. I then watched this youtube for the blanket stitch:


Working my way around with brown embroidery thread, I blanket stitched starting at the neck, to the middle of the back. There I inserted the ribbon hanger and stitched over it to secure it in place. Yu might need to add a few hidden stitches so the hanger is definitely staying. I finished up the stitching ending where I started.

I like how it turned out. I'm half thinking of going back and adding a few stitches for hooves but we'll see. I'm already working on something new so I might call it done!