The Little Felt Deer (Doe & Fawn) is a set of sewing patterns for a felt female deer, a doe, and her baby, a fawn. The finished doe is approximately 13 cm (5 1/8″) tall and 13 cm (5 1/8″) long, and the finished fawn is approximately 10 cm (4”) tall and 9 cm (3 5/8”) long. The sewing instructions are mostly the same for both. So you can choose to make only one of them, or make a mother-baby pair!
I based my design of the Little Felt Deer on the white-tailed deer, which is one of the two most common types of deer in North America (along with the mule deer). As shown in the image above, white-tailed deer have white on the underside of their tail, most of their belly, along the inner thighs of their hind legs and their neck.
But of course, there are many other types of deer in the world. Here is a link to a very informative site about the different species of deer. Once you decide on what type of deer you would like to make and have studied their characteristics, feel free to make modifications to the Little Felt Deer‘s colors and sizes to better adapt them to your deer’s species.
You can also combine whatever characteristics of a “deer” that you have in mind, because your felt deer does not necessarily have to be true to one single species! For example, would you like to put spots on the back of your doe which was modeled after a white-tailed deer? Well, go ahead! In fact, there are some species of deer that do maintain their spots even when they grow up, like the sika deer we encountered in Nara Park in Japan and the fallow deer that is native to Europe. To embroider spots on your felt doe, I suggest that you first draw spots on the paper pattern of the Doe’s body, just like those printed on the paper pattern of the Fawn’s body. Then follow the part of the instructions for the Fawn’s spots.
Speaking of spots, do you know why fawns have them? They are there to mimic shafts of light and shadow in the wilderness, to protect the fawns from predators! By the time white-tailed fawns are six months old and they are able to move about freely, their spots disappear.
To complete a happy deer family, I also have a buck sewing pattern in my collection! You may purchase the Little Felt Buck sewing pattern and the Little Felt Deer (Doe & Fawn) sewing patterns separately, but there is also a more economical deer family set that includes all of them together.
Lastly, let me present the largest species of the deer family: the moose! They are on average 1.8 to 3 m (6 to 10 feet) long and weigh 250 to 815 kg (550 to 1800 pounds)! If you are a moose fan, but would prefer to have a much smaller and less dangerous moose around your house, you may be interested in making a soft and cuddly moose from my Huggable Moose / Reindeer sewing patterns & instructions. Also, as shown in the image above, you can make a reindeer as well as a moose from the same set of sewing patterns!
Below are a few other Little Felt Animals that you may be interested in making along with your deer:
