Home-made conductive wire glue sounds interesting. My very first approach was to use wire glue, since it nominally sounds perfect. In reality, the stuff I got wasn't very conductive or strong (from a "glue" standpoint) and failed miserably. It was $5 off eBay though, so that could have been part of it.
Although it might not be quite as simple, I really like the idea of conductive fabric since it would end up being the most professional and safe kind of sensor. It might even be washable. It will bend and flex nicely. My only concern is if it's solderable.
I'll definitely keep those links handy if the fabric doesn't pan out. I'm not sure if the pressure sensitivity would be beneficial though, since it's my goal to have the pads require only touch and no real pressure. The I/O pins are all digital, not analog (for simplicity and because 34 analog pins are hard to come by on any of these AVR-GCC compatible chips). So having the voltage vary based on pressure might end up complicating the circuit.
But thanks for the input, and like I said, I will definitely keep those links close by.