First Craft of the Season: Hexie Pincushion/Caddy, for me!

I needed a new pincushion, and I found this the other day while searching for gift ideas. This thing ROCKS!!

I made mine with woven cotton scraps, card board from food  boxes, poly stuffing, Elmer's glue stick, and lots of hand sewing.

It's very big! That's one of those gigantic glue sticks back there.

This is the bottom.

I threw away my old pincushion and moved in right away. :) I love this thing!!

Here's the tutorial! Penny's Hands. You will have to read her tutorial for any of this to make sense, but if her's seems to hard, I may have simplified it here, for you.

However, I had a lot of trouble with her instructions. It's not written the way I learn best, and in case someone else learns the way I do, here's my translation!! The result is definitely worth the effort, and I'll surely make more. Wouldn't these be lovely gifts for those who sew?

First up, the ingredients list:

cotton fabric scraps
paper
cardboard from food boxes
glue stick (the kid kind, not the hot glue gun kind)
stuffing
thread
hand-sewing needles

I made two templates: one for the fabric, 1/4" bigger all around the than the elongated hexagon Penny gives instructions for on her blog, and one for the internal caddy walls 3"x5".

The cutting list:
Cardboard:
6- 2"x4" rectangles for the caddy inside walls
1 2"sides hexagon (link to paper hexies on Penny's blog) for the inside bottom of caddy

Paper:
1 2" side hexagon (link to paper hexies on Penny's blog) for the outside bottom of caddy

Fabric:
2- 5"x5" square-ish pieces (can be slightly smaller) for the bottom hexagons
6- 3"x5" rectangles (use your template) for the inside caddy walls
6- elongated hexagons (use your template) for the outside pincushion walls.

First, pin all the elongated hexagons together at sides. I did three at a time, like this.

Then, I pinned the two sets of three right sides together, but left an opening on the middle side at each end.

This is what I mean. I won't sew between these horizontal pins, because that's where the stuffing will go.

So, I sew all the sides together, glue all the fabrics onto their cardboards and paper.

See the opening I left here? this is pretty important, in case you think I'm being a bit nutters by going back to it so often.

Here are my steps for assembly, or continue from here with Penny's steps.
1. glue fabric rectangles to cardboard rectangles and fabric squares to paper and cardboard hexagons
2. sew rectangles together
3. sew elongated hexagons together at sides, leave opposite middle sections open for stuffing
4. sew tops of hexagons to tops of rectangles (fold seam allowance down)
5. sew paper hexagon to bottom of rectangles
6. sew the bottoms of the elongated fabric rectangles to the bottom of the rectangles/caddy, folding seam allowances in.
7. stuff with poly stuffing, sew the openings closed.
8. glue cardboard hexagon to inside bottom of the caddy. Enjoy!!


In Penny's tutorial, she suggests using english paper piecing technique but I wasn't into it, and just skipped all of that and machine sewed the big sides together. I did not sew any paper to any fabric. If paper had to stick to fabric, I glued it. You will still have to hand sew all the rest of it, tho.

Good luck with yours! Penny's got a fab idea with this, and I hope you like yours as much as I like mine!
Thanks, Penny!