Christmas Deer Cross Stitch Pattern

This deer is decked out for the holidays with snowflakes on his body and ornaments dangling from his antlers.

This would be a great project to stitch up for someone who loves hunting or the outdoors, and you can make the deer and ornaments different colors to suit your decor if you like (though the blue is really pretty).

The design comes out to 90 by 76 stitches and uses seven colors as well as one color of beads. Make French knots on the surface instead if you don’t want to do beading.

You can grab the free chart from Smart Cross Stitch.

[Photo: Smart Cross Stitch.]

Looking for more Christmas Cross Stitch patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

Next Pattern:

25 Christmas Bookmark Cross-stitch Patterns

I recently shared a review of the book Lit Stitch, and in the lengthy introductory materials there were a few paragraphs — enough to warrant their own heading — about how, or more accurately, whether, to fix mistakes in your cross stitch.

The conclusion was that for the most part no one will notice if, for instance, you stitch the wrong color for a stitch or two in a project that has many colors all worked together.

“No one else will notice” is used as reasoning for not fixing mistakes in knitting, crochet and other crafts, too, and I think that’s valid, as long as you also don’t notice.

If you know enough about yourself to know that every time you wear a sweater or look at a finished cross stitch project your eye will be drawn to that errant purl stitch or the extra stitch, by all means, fix it. Especially in cross stitch, if the mistake is minor, it shouldn’t take long to fix and you’ll feel a lot better about your project.

Of course, there are also times other people might notice a mistake. Say you’re stitching letters and you add an extra stitch or two on one side so now the letter doesn’t match the others. Again, easy fix to remove those extra stitches, so go ahead and do it while you can.

I also subscribe to the rule from the drama that anything that can’t be seen from the seats doesn’t matter on stage. Maybe in a house it’s the six-foot rule. Stand as far away from your piece as you think a person is likely to be close to it when it’s on display. If you can’t see any mistakes, there aren’t any mistakes.

I’d love to hear how you deal with mistakes in your cross-stitching, or if you consider them mistakes at all!

[Photo: y x from Pixabay]

Get the book here: Lit Stitch