I do lots of epp- hex's and other shapes too- I do not stitch through my papers- and with years of practice am fairly fast (hand stitching gets faster with time) when I first started binding quilts it took *forever* to hand stitch a queen binding- now it's just a couple hours-
my ^newest^ hex project the designer included a *tip sheet* with a couple different techniques- prep work is always somewhat time consuming- but she gave a couple different ways to prep your hex's---one is to use your iron...put starch in a lid or small dish- fold the fabric over the template, *paint* with starch & press in place til dry---the starch holds the hex shape. another is to use glue basting.