I Was Bitten by a Hexie Bug! - Sort Of

I've been viewing a lot of blogs lately where the gals are doing little itty bitty hexagons using the English Paper Piecing method (click to see a tutorial).  Siobhan's doing it and so is Texas Freckles who has a whole lotta people corralled into a hexagon by now.  Check them all out.  In fact, Sunshine has come up with a cool yo yo crochet method and is doing a giveaway of her book.  Me, I am sorely tempted - and probably will break down and do SOME teeny tiny hexies; but, for now, this is what I've had going on . . .

One day I was serching for pincushions and came upon the Kootoyou blog.  If you follow the link you'll scroll down until you see the pincushion.  She's got a slideshow presentation with instructions PLUS a downloadable PDF file complete with templates.

I cut out the templates, got out my scrap box and as you can see, ended up with quite a few hexagonal shaped pincushions.  My friend and I have been picking up button collections lately.  She found the bag at the hospice thrift store that had the ceramic birdie button (and quite a few other birdhouse buttons).  Isn't it Tweet?  Sorry, just could not resist the bad pun. I thought it looked adorable on the red, white and blue pincushion.

Kootoyou's instructions are for hand-piecing.  While I admire the diligence of hand-piecing, I just haven't got the time.  So, I cut the pieces out and chain stitched them on the sewing machine so that I ended up with two halves that got sewn together to form the top which was then united with the bottom, the whole was stuffed and then whip-stitched into shape.  One thing I really liked about this shape was that the straight edge of the whip-stitch closure was supposed to be straight.  What I mean is that when I do a circular pincushion, invariably the hole, when closed, looks more straight than curved like the rest of the cushion.  I usually do a lot of massaging to get that little half inch to match the rest of the circle's curve.  That wasn't a problem here.  Even less time spent; YAY!

I've made quite a few pincushions lately, trying different shapes and sizes.  They're quick to make and can be done mostly with scraps.  Although, I suspect I'll begin to run out of scraps soon!  But, anything that I can do with a more bang for your buck sort of zest to it is great!  I've gotten several books with cute pincushions in them too.  A review and listing of them will have to wait for another entry.

Finally, I shop at Nancy's Notions often and got a sale catalog this weekend.  One thing I noticed is that they have 14-count Aida available by the yard for $8.99.  I think that's a pretty reasonable price.  If anyone out there uses Aida, this might be for you!