Crafty Combinations: Quilting & Cross Stitch

A while ago I did an article regarding various ways to combine cross stitch and crochet. And I’ve been wanting to do a quilting version of it ever since! If you’re a quilter there are a ton of ways to use cross stitch or cross stitch patterns in your quilting. And if you’re just a cross stitcher who happens to love the quilting aesthetic there are options for you too!

So today, I’d like to collect some examples of various ways I’ve found to combine these two crafts. I’m sure there’s some options I haven’t thought of or see, so feel free to let me know if you’ve another way you’ve combined the two crafts!

Even within the options I’ll be sharing, this is far from an exhaustive list. there are probably thousands of projects out there combining these crafts already! I’m just here to break down the options into categories for you so you can decide which paths you want to go down. Or to simply inspire you to combine these crafts in your own unique ways!

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Adding Cross Stitch to Your Quilting Projects

We’ll start out with kinda the most obvious option. Incorporating finished cross stitch into your quilting.

Cross Stitch as Quilt Squares

I couldn’t possibly mention cross stitch and quilting without bringing up the charity quilts from SpriteStitch’s hayday. The site doesn’t really exist anymore, but the memories sure do live on. I managed to track down this youtube video featuring Quiltoni, who put together most if not all of the charity quilts back then. The video explains her process putting together the quilts and considerations to keep in mind while quilting up cross stitch like this.

These featured large full coverage cross stitch squares stitched by volunteers from the forums, then put together into a quilt and donated to Child’s Play for a charity auction!

I also found this example from the Bernina blog featuring a paper pieced square block; showing that aida is just another fabric and can be incorporated into whatever style quilt block you prefer! You don’t have to make just plain squares.

English Paper Piecing and Cross Stitch

While the above option features more machine quilting methods, you can absolutely hand stitch your cross stitch quilt squares as well! A bit ago I experimented with using cross stitch in English Paper Piecing and had a lot of fun with it. I had this random strip of aida I had cut off after finishing a piece by stretching it over canvas. It wasn’t very wide, so I had no idea what I could do with it other than a bookmark. It was a great piece to experiment with! At least this way it wasn’t getting thrown away.

I traced my hexagon template onto the fabric using Frixion pens and got to stitching these flower motifs on them. Note that I only used Frixion on the very edges of my fabric that would not be visible in the final quilt! Heat erase pens can will show back up in cold temperatures, so be mindful of how you use them.

Stitching them still on the strip made it a bit easier to hold than the tiny hexagons. Though it was still an awkardly thin strip. If you planned to do this, you can of course use a larger piece of fabric on a hoop or qsnap and just mark off where you’ll be cutting them out later. This will also help reduce fraying while you work on it.

In fact, once I did cut them out I ended up using fray check along the edges to make sure they’d stay nice and clean while I went about stitching them onto my paper templates. I’m not sure I would recommend the glue basting option for aida as as removing the papers later might shred the edges a bit more, but of course if that’s your preferred method do some experimentation of your own and see how it fares!

I ended up making a hexagon mini quilt with 12 cross stitch flowers surrounded by quilting cotton hexagons. And I think it turned out really cute! I’d love to do a full sized quilt in this style one day. Or even playing with different shapes. I’m not sure I’d go any smaller than these 1″ hexagons, as this doesn’t give a ton of room to stitch already, but if you find some super small motifs you could definitely go smaller if you wanted!

Here’s some fun examples by JedXStitch using sprites from the Stardew Valley Cross Stitch book and some fun quilted hexagons that will be part of a english paper pieced “quilt as you go” wall hanging. Aren’t they gorgeous?! Hopefully this shoutout gets us a new update on this project. (But also, she’s been busy creating some absolutely gorgeous cross stitch designs. Which you should check out.)

I did do some research before my mini quilt project to see if someone had already tried EPP with cross stitched pieces on aida or evenweave, and I couldn’t find any examples. I knew I couldn’t possibly be the first, I just couldn’t find them!

…until I was looking through my instagram saves for something completely unrelated just the other day and found the above post that I’d been tagged in 2 years ago. Well before I’d done my mini quilt last year. I’d just forgotten about it somehow. I’d been meaning to try it for years, so I won’t say I got the idea from Jed. But it probably at least reinforced the idea in my mind back then.

All goes to show you lots of folks have probably come to consider how to combine these two crafts and come to a similar conclusion… and the internet is just much more vast and difficult to search than Google would have you believe. Plus not everything ends up on the internet, so there’s very likely more EPP cross stitch quilts out there that we’ll never see.

What I did find while searching for EPP and cross stitch was that plenty of folks have used waste canvas or soluble canvas on quilting cotton instead, which leads me to the next option:

Waste Canvas / Soluble Canvas Onto Quilting Cotton

Now I’ve done a full article on how to work with waste canvas and soluble canvas. But I’d mostly used it to stitch onto clothes or bags or what have you. But while researching the above, I did come across HugsAreFun who did some small cross stitches onto a quilting cotton to incorporate into an EPP quilt using 1″ hexagons.

This is just a small little hexagon, but nothing’s stopping you from going bigger! Whether you’re doing larger EPP shapes, stitching across multiple shapes, or stitching onto a premade quilt square done on a machine. Waste canvas makes it possible to cross stitch onto basically any fabric and keep those crosses nice and uniform!

Stamped Quilt Kits

I don’t see these around as much anymore, but there was definitely a time in the late 90s or early 2000s where I was seeing stamped cross stitch quilt kits everywhere. I distinctly remember this Butterfly quilt by Bucilla that I wanted to do one day. But of course it’s well out of print now so my best bet is a destashed kit off of Ebay. And surprisingly, they’re still quite reasonably priced!

The legacy of the stamped cross stitch quilt kit lives on though, and I did find some baby quilt options still readily available today, and no doubt there are others out there that I just haven’t found!

But if you’re not finding any waste canvas or soluble canvas, this is an option! You could draw your design or a simple grid on your fabric using washable pen or tailors chalk and stitch it up that way as if it was a stamped cross stitch.

Cross Stitch Themed Quilt Accents

This next category focuses less on a traditional cross stitch and instead incorporates the X-shaped stitch into your quilting. But when combined with cross stitched squares could really tie the whole quilt together! But we’ll be back to making finished projects with your cross stitch finishes later in this article, don’t worry.

Cross Stitch as a Crazy Quilt Border

While you could absolutely crazy quilt with a finished cross stitch on aida, that kinda falls under the first category above, so instead I’ll focus on the unique part of the crazy quilting style — the embroidered borders.

I found this excellent video by Ivory Blush Roses featuring a few different options for using cross stitch in your crazy quilting.

You could of course take this a bit further, pull out the soluble canvas again, and cross stitch a full border motif along the edges of your fabric. Go wild!

Tie a Quilt With Cross Stitch

When I was doing the EPP mini quilt I wanted to stitch everything by hand. The hexagons themselves, stitching them together, the binding, the quilting, everything. So I did a lot of investigating on hand quilting. And I came across hand tied quilts. I’d seen it before, of course. But I hadn’t thought about it in ages. Of course, traditional ties generally have the tied lengths on the front, which is lovely but not the look I was hoping for.

Then I came across a blog by SuzyQuilts that used small cross stitches and then tied on the back instead. So of course I had to incorporate that into my cross stitch mini quilt! It’s actually kinda hard to see in my example though as I picked an orangy color that is already present in my fabrics. But if you look close you can see little Xs throughout.

Suzy did a better job of showcasing this though, and even features a X shaped block, which we’ll get to later in this list.

Now a single X in the middle of a square isn’t much of a cross stitch design, but it is a lovely little touch to further incorporate cross stitch into your quilting!

Cross Stitch Binding

Shortly after finding cross stitch quilt tying, I also found this cute cross stitch binding accent on the White-RoseDesigns blog. Which again would be a lovely little nod to cross stitching, whether your quilt features actual cross stitching or will just be keeping you warm while you cross stitch.

I didn’t end up doing this on my mini quilt. But I definitely plan to in the future! I’m thinking a fun variegated thread will make for a lovely gradient all around a quilt one day for sure! And you can of course make these stitches as large or small as you’d like.

Quilting a Finished Cross Stitch

Okay, so far all these options are very quilt focused. Let’s make the cross stitch the main feature for a bit. How else can we finish our cross stitch pieces using quilting skills? Specifically, here’s some ideas where the cross stitch is still the main focus, not a full quilt.

Finishing a Large Cross Stitch as a Wall Hanging

Rather than small cross stitch motifs worked into a quilt, how about finishing some of your larger cross stitch pieces using a quilted border to accent the design itself?

A great example of this are this Sylph Queen design and finish by SproutingLupine. She’s also done some other cross stitch wall hangings just using a simple binding around the edges rather than full quilt blocks.so that the cross stitch can truly shine.

This was actually inspired by the amazing unicorn tapestry FFO by uncannykari (stitched by dees20stitches). And I mean, you can clearly see why. Hopefully it’ll bring you some inspiration as well!

EPP Around Cross Stitch

I really love the idea of making the cross stitch the main event, but accenting the sides with quilting. But I’m more of a hand stitched EPP kinda person, myself. So I set out to do just that with this next project. I am working on a Vlog of the process I did here (and hopefully I’ll remember to update this article once it’s up!), but basically…

I took some cross stitches that were languishing in my ‘finished yet unfinished’ pile and laid out some EPP half-inch hexies on top to create a bit of a frame around them.

Once I had my layout down, I stitched the hexies together in that arrangement. Then, stitched the cross stitches to the frame along the edges using a ladder stitch.

I then made a second rectangle and stitched them together into this adorable little pencil pouch~! But you could of course finish it as another wall hanging, or really use that fabric panel for any sewing pattern. It’s just fabric, after all.

‘Quilted’ Ornaments.

If you’ve got a small finish but still want to make the cross stitch the main event, how about a smaller finish. For example, these ‘Quilted’ ornaments. I put quilted in quotes because we’re not really quilting are we? But it’s definitely quilt inspired and quite easy to make. I’ve got a whole tutorial on making these cross stitched quilted ornaments for you.

That tutorial includes a star cut out template, but really anything that would fit in that center ~ 1″ area in the center. Such as… all of Craftigurumi’s mini designs. Maybe personalize some baubles for each member of your family? With a motif representing them and their favorite colors quilted.

Quilted Project Bags

You don’t have to stop at quilting with your actual cross stitch. You could simply make some accessories for your cross stitching using quilting!

For example, a quilted project bag! I’ve done a whole article on the different types of project bags you can use for cross stitch. And of course like with any sewing pattern you can make it using pieced fabric or aida. So you can of course make a quilt themed bag that you then store your cross stitch projects in. Here’s one I made recently using English Paper piecing for the cover:

Cross Stitching Quilt Designs

Now for some projects for the cross stitchers who don’t really quilt themselves, but love the aesthetic. Perhaps you’re making a gift for a quilter. Or you’re the quilter and just want a change of pace but still want to tie your crafting back to quilting in some way.

Cross Stitches of Quilt Squares

The most obvious option here is stitching quilt square style motifs. And there’s quite a few options out there for this!

StitchSprout has been doing a few of these lately and they’re absolutely gorgeous. As an example, she’s got a Mini Barn Quilt up on her Etsy. But the real star of the show is the mini SALs that she’s been doing for her Patreon, such as this Butterfly Quilt. Definitely worth the subscription!

I also did some quilt squares of my own last year, but I made it interactive by designing it as a cross stitch quilt book tracker. I designed patterns for 16 mini quilt squares and then tracked my reading habits over months, using the square to denote what genre of book I read. I pulled colors from the covers of my books, but you could also have the colors track something, like page count or where you got the book from. I even incorporated ratings into the design by stitching borders around my squares!

I’ve got a whole video up explaining the tracker if you’re interested:

I’m definitely not the only person to have done quilt squares before. Carolyn Manning has a whole series of quilt cross stitches ranging from entire elaborate designs based on existing quilts to individual squares. My favorite is probably her crazy quilting series, though. Which was released a pattern a month back in 2016!

Rogue Stitchery is another designer that seems to specialize in quilt block themed designs. They’ve got a lot of really colorful quilt designs in their shop, in all different quilt block styles, like this patchwork piece:

There’s tons of these styles of designs out there! Once you start looking for them, you’ll see them everywhere. I couldn’t possibly list them all here.

Quilt-themed cross stitches

Rather than stitching just the squares themselves, how about stitching quilts and quilt themed designs?

If you’re a quilter, or making something for a quilter, maybe some quilting supplies to decorate a craft room with. Like this Happy Quilting piece by Sue Hillis.

Something more general? How about this absolutely adorable quilting fox by Nathnolu?

Want something with beads? How about this quilt-themed Mill Hill kit?

Paula Vaughan Quilt Designs

If you’re looking for larger detailed quilt-themed cross stitch designs, look no further than Paula Vaughan. Unfortunately these are largely out of print so you’ll be scouring ebay and second hand book shops for these, but they are absolutely gorgeous designs. And there are tons of them! Seriously, do a quick google image search for “Paula Vaughan Quilts” and have a scroll sometime.

Cross Stitch Themed Quilt Squares

Now back to quilting… except this time we’re quilting cross stitches!

X shaped Quilt blocks –

Turns out all it takes to make a cross stitched themed quilt is making some Xs out of fabric. There’s quite a few takes on this concept out there, so here are some of my favorites.

First up, this gorgeous FREE pattern by Fabric Mutt; look how cute these individual stitched squares are. And can you imagine making a bunch of these xs in different colors and making a cross stitch design out of these squares? Literal goals.

The strips and squares method outline above does create a bit of waste though, so if you want to use up some of your scraps fully, how about another free pattern just combining squares and halfsquare triangles to create these patchwork blocks by ModaFabrics?

Need more inspiration? How about spacing the Xs out like this kit on FernHill, or adding in some scattered squares like MaeJustSew?

EPP Plusses

Prefer hand quilting? How about English Paper Piecing some pluses? What is a plus but an X turned on its side? I actually started a quilt using the free template provided by WildOlive. But rather than lining all the pluses up as usually done, I’ve turned them on their side and stitched some squares between them! I’m… admittedly not very far just yet, but I promise I’m making a design out of these stitches and it’ll all make sense… eventually. But I don’t want to spoil it for you just yet.

You’re gonna have to look at it from quite a distance to see the full design though, as all the white squares are quite distracting up close. I was going for that bit of white aida peeking out between stitches, but I wonder if I should try a darker “background” block. We’ll see how much unpicking I want to do before continuing, I guess.

Quilting a Cross Stitch Pattern

While you can do what I’m doing above with my EPP blocks and make a design out of quilted Xs, there’s another popular method for turning cross stitch patterns and pixel art into quilts… Pixel quilts!

Pixel Quilts

I know I already mentioned Quiltoni at the beginning of this article, and I swear I’m not sponsored. But she’s also a great example of the pixel quilt. She’s got a ton of beginner friendly and smaller designs available for you to try. Both kits and in pattern form. Yet she also does ridiculously large and complicated pixel designs. Truly something for everyone!

In fact, if you’d like to try and learn to make and design your own pixel quilts, definitely check out her book Designing Pixel Quilts! Whether you’re making your own pixel art or are converting existing game sprites, it covers different ways to design your pattern.

But she’s definitely not the only source of pixel quilting out there. Any cross stitch pattern can turn into a quilt just by picking out some fabric colors based on the suggested threads and making a whole lot of squares.

In fact, some of the first known Pixel Quilts were cross stitch themed. Eleanor Burns helped popularize this style of quilt with her 2001 book Cross Stitch Quilts.

You don’t have to make a full quilt, either! For example these free pixel flowers by TildasWorld are very reminiscent of traditional cross stitch and are a relatively quick make into a small pillow. So if a larger piece is feeling too daunting right now, you can always start small.

You can go as simple or complicated as you want with this style of quilt. And you can make the squares as big or small as you need! Just remember the larger the square the smaller the cross stitch or pixel art should be, as even this tiny heart from Diary of a Quilter turns into a full size quilt when you’re using 5″ squares!

Either way, it’s a great way to immortalize your favorite cross stitch design. There are some limits, such as backstitch-heavy designs. But you could always do the backstitch as high contrast quilting, or even some surface embroidery. Get creative with it!

The main goal here is to have fun, so whatever method you use for combining your favorite crafts… have fun with it!