Hexie Pillow

I just finished a new throw pillow. When we moved in November I wanted to make all new throw pillow covers for the living room. At our old house the pillows were covered in a blue waffle weave fabric that I cut from an old shower curtain (don’t worry it was 100% cotton). We had lived with them for a while and I was tired of them. Plus I had a new awesome house and I wanted new awesome decor to go with. I checked in with C (my husband) and D (our housemate) about colors and themes for the living room. (They have to live here too.) I really wanted bold black and white prints, but they wanted warmer neutrals. I ended up getting a nice warm gray, which I think was a nice compromise, and recovered most of the pillow inserts. Except I forgot about one. I think I got tired of sewing pillows, or I had to go cook dinner and never came back to it or something else, but whatever it was I had one sad, naked pillow insert hanging out in my sewing room for the last couple of months.

I saw this on Sew Mama Sew a few weeks ago and totally fell in love. I have done a lot of different little projects with English Paper Piecing, but those have often resulted in an odd collection of hexagons in a ziplock and no clear project. This time was going to be different. I would plan!

I went home and dug through the scrap bin, picked a bunch of scraps I liked and then sorted them by color. I ended up with more color piles then I really wanted (neutral, black, pink, purple, yellow, light blue and dark blue) so I asked my husband to choose his three favorite. It just so happened that he picked very similar colors to the Sew Mama Sew example (which was totally fine with me). 

I started to cut out the stars, but I felt like they were too big, so I went back to just regular 1 1/2 inch hexies. I cut them all out of heavier scrapbook paper and used basting glue to baste them on. Then I laid out all the hexes in a pleasing design (I wanted a few clumps of color on a mostly all neutral background). I flipped them over and numbered them so that I would be able to sew them together in the order I wanted.

I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks when we watch TV in the evenings. I finally had a chance to finish it over the weekend while we were snowed in and I was sick. I ended up having to add another row of hexes on the top and one side so that it would fit the pillow form I have.

I made the back out of the same gray that all the other pillows are made out of. I just did my usual envelope cover, it is easier than a zipper and as long as you have enough overlap (on this one I did 3 1/2 inches) it looks great.

It turned out that the pillow cover was a little smaller than the pillow, but I think it looks good being a little stuffed and firmer.