Quick And Easy Guide To Making Hand Embroidered Quilt Blocks
After years of framing embroidery in hoops, I started becoming curious about creating more functional embroidery. This led me down a path of lots of experimentation and creating, which included turning my embroidery pieces into hand embroidered quilt blocks!
In this post, I’ll share with you how to plan and create a hand embroidered quilt block and share a few special considerations to keep in mind. It’s really quite simple to do, and you can create beautiful wall hangings or even turn several of your creations into a larger quilt.

How To Make A Hand Embroidered Quilt Block
The beauty of quilting is that it’s all just a little bit of math and geometry. You can plan out an embroidery to stitch and incorporate into a quilt block or you can use some of your existing embroidery projects to incorporate into the block…there is most likely a quilt block design for any size embroidery you create!
Supplies Needed
- Embroidery hoop
- Linen or cotton fabric
- Embroidery floss
- Embroidery scissors
- fabric marker or pen
- Sewing machine
- Cutting mat / rotary cutter or fabric scissors
- Quilting thread
- Quilt batting
Where To Find Inspiration And Patterns
Scissor Tail Quilting has a phenomenal quilt block library that you can browse through to find the particular design you want. And Quilter’s Cache has a large library of free patterns.
I like to find quilt block designs that have a medium or larger size square in the center as this is where I usually incorporate the embroidery. You’ll just want to make sure that the part of the quilt block you plan to incorporate the embroidery will fit the overall design.

Using An Embroidery You’ve Already Made
If you have an embroidery that’s already finished, make sure you choose one that has a fair amount of extra fabric around the design. This will give you enough room to leave a nice margin of negative space around the design and it may also give you more options as to what kind of quilt block you create out of it.
Making An Embroidery For A Quilt Block
You can also plan an embroidery around a specific size of quilt block. Starting from scratch like this can be fun so you can choose a particular color scheme to use for the embroidery and background fabric. You will also have complete control over how large or small the embroidery needs to be, which will open up more possibilities of different quilt block designs you can choose from.
Choose a fabric that is similar to what you’ll use for the rest of the quilt block, such as light to medium weight linen or cotton fabrics.

Stitching The Embroidery
I recommend embroidering the piece of fabric first before you assemble the quilt block. You can mark the fabric but don’t cut out the quilt piece just yet…leave a good amount of extra fabric so that you can easily place it in an embroidery hoop or slate frame. Stitching the embroidery in a hoop or frame will prevent the fabric from puckering underneath the stitches.
You may want to read through another post I created all about keeping the back of embroidery neat before you get started. This will prevent messy stitches from showing through to the front of the quilt when you’re finished.
Then, transfer the design onto the fabric using your favorite method and you’re ready to get stitching!
If you’ve never embroidered before, check out this beginner’s guide to embroidery.

Preparing The Embroidered Fabric
When you’re done stitching, make sure that all of the loose ends of thread are secured and trim any excess tails of thread, as these can sometimes show through to the front of the fabric.
It’s also helpful to have a neutral colored batting on hand if you plan to assemble the block into a wall hanging or larger quilt, as this can also help hide some of the threads along the back.
Press the embroidery to remove any wrinkles or creases in the fabric.
Then cut out the piece of fabric according to the dimensions you’ll need for the quilt block, making sure that the design is centered properly.
Then you can assemble the quilt block like you normally would!
May your needle weave tales of nature’s whimsy…I hope you embrace the simple joys one stitch at a time!
A similar read that may peak your interest: here’s even more unique embroidery finishing ideas.
Amanda is a hand embroidery teacher and artist. With over 15 years of experience in the craft industry and embroidery, she owns and runs Crewel Ghoul, sharing accessible tutorials and patterns to help inspire fellow crafters to get creative. In addition to running this website, she teaches on Skillshare and Youtube.