Needle Felted Deer: Spots Go On Last, Legs Need Wire

Two jobs on a fawn sit at opposite ends of the build, and both of them are about timing rather than skill.

The wire goes in before any wool at all, because a deer leg is finer than a pencil and wool at that thickness buckles under the body within a day of standing on a shelf. The spots go on after every other bit of surface work is finished, as separate dots pressed in with the needle tip, because a spot laid early gets dragged into a smudge by the needling that follows. Everything between those two ends — barrel, neck, head, coat — is ordinary needle felting, and if the order at the ends is right the middle looks after itself.

What you need

• Core wool — 20 g for a fawn about 12 cm at the shoulder
• Warm mid-brown corriedale — 10 g for the coat
• White — 5 g, for the spots, throat, belly and rump patch
• Small amounts of black for the nose, hooves and eye rims
• 1 mm florist or craft wire — about 60 cm
• 38 gauge needle for shaping, 40 gauge for the surface and the spots
• Foam pad, and 4 mm black glass eyes if you would rather not felt them

Building the fawn

1. Bend the leg wires. Two lengths of wire, each bent into a wide U. The bottom of each U is the shoulder or hip; the two arms are the legs. Front legs slightly shorter than the back, and cut them a centimetre longer than you want so you can adjust.
2. Join the pairs. Lay the two U shapes about 5 cm apart and bind them together with a third short length of wire running between them — that spine wire also gives you a neck stub to build the head onto. Full method in wire armature for needle felting.
3. Wrap the legs. Wind a thin strand of core wool down each leg and back up, then needle it lightly. Keep them fine — a fawn leg at this scale is barely thicker than the wire itself. Bend a small kink rearward at the hock on each back leg before you commit to the shape — the joint points back towards the tail, never forward.
4. Build the body. Wrap core wool around the spine wire in a tight barrel, then firm it hard. A fawn body is rounder and shorter than an adult deer's, close to a fat egg lying on its side, with the deepest point just behind the front legs.
5. Neck and head. Wrap the neck stub upright, then add a separate ball for the skull and needle it into a soft wedge with a blunt, rounded muzzle. Fawns have short faces — nothing like the long taper of a fox.
6. Ears. Two flat leaf shapes, made on the pad as separate pieces with the edges needled firm. Deer ears are big and set high on the skull, well above the eye line and wide apart, carried out to the sides rather than straight up.
7. Coat. Cover the whole animal in thin veils of mid-brown, working over the joins so the legs, neck and body read as one piece. Then lay white on the throat, chest, belly, inner legs and under the tail.
8. Face. Black nose pad, eyes set high and wide on the sides of the skull — on its widest part, where a prey animal carries them — with a thin dark rim, and a pale ring around the muzzle. Eye placement is what makes deer look gentle rather than blank — see needle felting eyes.
9. Feet. Trim the wire ends, fold the last few millimetres back on themselves so nothing sharp is exposed, and cap each foot with a tiny black hoof.

The spots

This is the part that decides whether it looks like a fawn or like a small brown dog, and it happens after every other bit of surface work is finished. Wait until the coat is smooth and the animal is done — a spot laid on unfinished wool gets dragged out of shape by the needling that follows.

How to make one dot

Pull off a pinch of white — genuinely a pinch, a few fibres — and roll it between finger and thumb until it forms a small point, like the tip of a cotton bud. Set the point against the coat, and press it in with the very tip of a 40 gauge needle. Three or four shallow stabs into the middle of the dot, and stop.

What you must not do is needle it flat. If you work round the edges the way you would when laying a patch of colour, the fibres spread outwards and you get a soft pale smudge instead of a dot. The dot should sit slightly proud of the surface, with a defined edge.

Where the spots go

Real fallow and roe fawns are not evenly speckled. The pattern is:

• Two rough rows running along either side of the spine, from the shoulder to the rump. Rough — the dots wander, and some are close together.
• A looser scatter over the flanks and haunches, thinning out as it goes down the sides.
• Nothing on the legs below the elbow, nothing on the face, nothing on the belly.

The one thing that ruins it is even spacing. A grid reads as polka dots. Vary the size — some dots twice the diameter of others — let a few overlap, and leave irregular gaps. The two spine rows should be the only part of the whole pattern with any order to it.

Twenty-five to forty spots is about right on a 12 cm fawn. Stop before you think you are finished; adding three more is far easier than removing one.

Antlers, and why the fawn is easier

Antlers belong on the adult stag, and there is no reason to attempt them on a first deer. For a stag, make the body longer and leaner, drop the spots, and build the antlers one of two ways.

The first is wire: take a fine wire, wrap it in a thin strand of pale brown wool while twisting the wire between your fingers, then bend the branches and twist the pairs together at the base. Push the base into the skull and needle wool over the join. The second, and often better at small scale, is a pair of forked twigs or twisted dried stems pushed into the head — real branching beats felted branching.

Common problems

• The spots look like pale patches. They were needled flat. Press only into the centre with the needle tip and leave the edges alone.
• The legs sag or splay. No wire, or wire too soft. 1 mm is the minimum for a standing deer; anything thinner is for posing, not support.
• It reads as a dog. The muzzle is too long, or the ears are too small and set too low. Deer ears are large, high on the skull, wide apart and turned out to the sides.
• Lumpy legs. Too much wool wrapped on, or wrapped unevenly. Strip it back and start with less — you can always add.
• Spots in a grid. Even spacing is the giveaway. Vary size and gaps, and keep the only real order in the two spine rows.

Variations

• Curled sleeping fawn. Legs folded under, head turned back along the flank. No armature needed, and it is the quickest version — an hour, maybe less.
• Standing stag. Longer legs, deeper chest, thick neck, and wire or twig antlers.
• Doe and fawn pair. The same build at two scales, the adult plain brown and the fawn spotted.
• Reindeer. A heavier body, a pale grizzled winter coat and short branched antlers. The one deer where both sexes carry them, so an antlered female is correct rather than a mistake — and it makes a good companion piece to a set of felted Christmas ornaments.
• Woodland scene. A fawn standing among felted mushrooms on a felted moss base.

If the legs are the part putting you off, make a curled sleeping fawn first and come back to the standing version once the spots are working. For the surface techniques that carry across, look at needle felting fur and how to blend wool colours, and for another animal built the same way try a bunny.