Summer Craft Camp

Cork fabric gives a unique and interesting texture to your projects. And Cork fabric does not behave like a regular fabric because it's not really a regular fabric. It is the bark of the Cork oak tree pressed down thin and adhered to a fine mesh backing. So it still has strength. It works well for corners, you can fold it and it won't crack.

Um Cork fabric will can come in a variety of different um prints and a lot of times it will come in this weight kind of quite thin, but it can come in a little bit of a thicker weight as well. So check the description if you're buying online and I've even seen Cork fabrics that are dye cut. So it has a pattern cut on the front and the fabric that it is adhered to on the back shows through the front. So it gives kind of a cool look to it. Um And here's another uh example of a print that that Cork fabric can come in so it can come in all different colored prints.

Um And like I said, different dye cuts, so check those out. It can be a little bit pricier, but it gives a very cool texture to your projects. And Cork fabric doesn't typically come in yardage. It typically will come in rectangles like sheets. And this 18 by 15 sheet was the biggest sheet that I could find.

So this is the size sheet we're using to make our grocery bag. So we're going to be using that 18 by 15 sheet for this bottom panel of our grocery bag and the cork fabric, like I said, it is, it's quite strong and flexible, but because I'm using it as the bottom panel of a grocery bag that I'm going to load up with some heavy things. Probably I have adhered a medium weight fusible interfacing to the wrong side just to add that much more stability and strength to it. And I'm using this sort of medium weight fusible and you can fuse onto the wrong side of cork fabric, use a low heat setting and a lot of pressure and patience to adhere that um all the way across your sheet of cork fabric. And you could use a little bit of a lighter weight interfacing if you wanted to.

And it would still give an extra firmness and stability to the bottom panel of this bag that we're making. So in addition to our cork panel for our grocery bag, we're going to need two rectangles of fabric measuring 11 inches by 18 inches. And I'm using a canvas fabric to give my bag, a little bit of sturdy stability. You can definitely use a quilting cotton fabric. It'll just be a little bit more flexible and it won't be as liable to stand up on its own.

So, on the upper edges of my canvas panels, I have double folded, a half inch unpressed and I'm going to top stitch this fold. So I'm edge stitching about a quarter, uh sorry, an eighth of an inch from that lower falls. There's one side of my panel, we're gonna do the same thing on the other side. So I have that double folded, half inch toward the wrong side. All right, there's the other side of our panel done.

Now, in addition to our canvas, we're going to need something for our straps for our bag. Now, for this one, I used 1.5 inch wide twill tape and that worked really well for a nice soft flexible strap that's still strong for this bag. I'm using one inch wide webbing and you'll need about 84 inches cut that in half um, to get a 42 inch long strap for each side of your panel. Now, we're just going to align our strap with the raw edge of the strap on the raw long edge of this canvas panel, four and three quarter inches from the corner. So at four and three quarter inches, going to align the outer edge of that strap and we wanna make sure we're at four and three quarter inches all the way up.

So that remains straight all the way up and on the other side. So we wanna make sure that our, our strap isn't twisted. So we're going up and around to make sure that that stays flat and four and three quarter inches from this side as well. We wanna line up our strap now to attach our strap. The strap is, is the point on the bag that's going to get the most stress.

So I like to make sure this is stitched down nice and securely. So we're gonna start at the lower edge, the lower raw edge and stitch up this edge stitching about eighth of an inch all the way up. We're going to stitch across. We're gonna stitch a little uh square stitch with an X and then stitch down the opposite side. So I'm just gonna double check my, that my strap is straight.

All right. And then we'll bring this to the machine and start stitching from that lower edge. And I'm actually let's bump up our stitch length a little bit. We're going to bump it up to a three millimeter length. And when we get to about an eighth of an inch from that upper fold, we're gonna stop with the needle down, pivot stitch across that upper fold, we're gonna pivot stitch down about an inch.

You don't need to really measure it. And then we're going to pivot across and then when we get to this corner, I'm gonna put my stitch length down so that I get right in the corner there, I'm going to go diagonal and then up at this corner, we're gonna go back across the upper edge and I like to go slightly under my previous stitching line just to get an extra stitch in there. And then we're going to go back diagonal back down to this corner and then continue stitching down this side edge of our strap. So there's one strap, it's good and strongly stitched. So we're gonna do the same thing to the other side of the strap about an eighth of an inch from that upper fold, not going to pivot and then stitch down about an inch.

I'm going to use this one just to make sure I'm about even stitch back across the strap, pivot and stitch diagonally. Oh, stitch back across the upper edge and then diagonally again and then stitch the rest of our strap. So there is one panel of our grocery bag. Let's bring in our other panel. We're going to do the same thing four and three quarter inches from this side edge and webbing makes really nice straps because they're good and sturdy.

You could definitely make yourself some fabric straps if you wanted to go for that look, it's always an option four and three quarter inches from this edge will pin our strap down and then we'll attach our straps using the same process and I'm not back stitching at the lower edge because that lower edge is going to get stitched to our cork fabric anyway. And I'm using a white thread so that you can see all my stitches. You could of course, use a matching thread thread that matches your strap so that stitching is invisible, especially if you're not terribly confident in your ability to top stitch, nice and straight, but a longer stitch length also will help those stitches appear straighter. This contrasting thread is a little bit of a design detail on its own, get a nice pop of color. So I'm just measuring how far down I stitched for this um square stitch pivot to stitch diagonally stitching again across that upper edge and then another diagonal stitch.

All right. So there are our fabric panels with our handles already attached. Now, we're using French seams to stitch our side seams here. So it feels weird to put wrong sides together and stitch, but that's what we're going to do wrong sides together. We're matching up our side scenes.

We wanna make sure the folds at our upper edges are good and aligned and we're going to stitch our side seams using a quarter inch seam allowance. I'll flip it over and do the same thing on the other side. And this French seam makes all of my seams on the inside nice and finished. So I don't have to line this bag, all my seam allowances are going to be encased and finished and protected. Now, we need to trim down our seam allowance by about half.

So I'm gonna take my ruler and rotary cutter and I'm going to trim this down to about an eighth of an inch, same thing on the other side and then at the lower edge if you've gotten off anywhere. So my seam got a little bit weird or maybe it was my cutting. That was weird uh in the first place, but I'm not totally even at this lower edge. So I'm just gonna trim that off to get a nice even rectangle again. I'll trim off some of these threads too.

Now to finish our French scene, we're going to turn this wrong side out and we're going to stitch our seam again using a quarter inch seam allowance again. So that's going to equal a half inch seam allowance total. But I'm wiggling that to make sure my seam is out all the way right at that edge, making sure my folded upper edges are still even same thing on the other side, making sure that seam is all the way out. So we can make sure we hit our half inch seam allowance. All right.

So we're gonna stitch this again using a quarter inch seam going from that folded upper edge and back stitching. So now all my raw edges are encased and that's why we trimmed that seam allowance down to an eighth. So that when we turn this right side out, we don't see any fringes of that previous edge of the fabric. So now we're gonna stitch our other side seam got a little bit of bulk here. So I'm just gonna help that go under the foot.

There we go. And then when we turn this right side out there, we have the upper part of our grocery bag. So we get all of our threads trimmed. So there's the upper part all finished and the inside seam allowances are nice and finished. So now we need to turn to the bottom portion of our bag.

So let's bring our cork rectangle back in. So here's my 18 by 15 Cork rectangle. It is interface on the back for some extra strength. Now, I'm going to be cutting out a rectangle along the short edge. I'm cutting a five by three inch inch rectangle from the center and this is to help us box our corners and a lot of times you can box your corners by stitching the side seam and then flattening it out.

But because this cork is so it's so it's stiff now, especially now that I've got my interfacing on it, it's kind of tough to do. So we're gonna cut out our uh our rectangles first to help us with that. So you want to mark the center of this short edge, you can fold it in half and kind of finger press to mark your center and then we want five inches. So we're lining up that center mark with 2.5 inches and we're going down three inches. So there's my rectangle five inches.

So it's five inches wide and three inches down, gonna fix my line real quick. Here we go. We're gonna do the same thing to the other side. So I've already kind of made my marks. So I've made my center mark.

So I'm going to align that center mark with 2.5 inches and go down three inches to get my five by three rectangle. And we're going to cut those rectangles out and you can save these little rectangles for something else, some little project with cork fabric, the edges of cork. Um Don't fray so you can use those little bits of cork scraps for monograms on the top of anything. All kinds of fun projects. Yeah.

Now with right sides together, we're going to fold this and stitch our side edges. So our side edge just above our boxed corner and Cork fabric acts kind of like vinyl kind of like a laminate fabric in that you don't wanna pin because once a hole gets put in your fabric, that hole is just there. So it's a little bit less forgiving. Um If you try to unpick seams, those holes just remain. So I'm stitching using my half inch seam allowance here.

We're going to do the same thing on the other side. And this fabric because it is fairly thin, you do not need a real big needle. And in fact, a big needle is bad for this fabric because as I mentioned, if you put a hole in it, that hole remains and the bigger your needle size, the bigger the hole you will leave in the fabric. So I'm just using a regular size 80 universal needle trimming my threads. Now, I want to press these seam allowances just I'm just going to finger, press them to one side and I'm going to top stitch those down about a quarter inch from that scene.

So it's a little bit tricky to get on machine. Sometimes it's easier to go from the wrong side. I'm gonna do that. So I'm stitching from the wrong side. Top stitching seam lounge is down quarter inch from the scene.

Make sure that seam is flat as it goes under the needle. It's nice and open. So there's my top stitching on one side of the scene and whatever side you press your seam allowances toward for this one, you want to do the same thing, press them in the same direction for the other side of the bag to kind of flatten this down to get it under the needle. Um OK, so there's my other line of top stitching just to hold that seam allowance down. Now, let's smooth this out.

Now we need to box our corners. So we're going to flatten out that corner and because we cut out that rectangle, this is going to lie nice and flat. Those raw edges are going to lie nice and flat together. We're going to stitch this using a half inch seam allowance because we have an angle here, we're gonna have to start a little bit up on the angle, do the same thing on the other side flatten that out. And because Cork has it has some water resistant properties.

So using this as the lower panel of a bag, makes it nice and functional. If you set your bag on the floor of your car in the winter that melted snow won't get soaked into your bag. So there are our corners. So boxing those corners is going to give it that dimension and help it to stand up. Now, I'm going to turn my Cork panel right side out and you don't have to be afraid to kind of manhandle it.

Cork has, um it's, it's very strong, so it turns out nicely. So I'm poking my corners out. Now, all that's left to do is attach the upper edge of our lower panel to the lower edge of our upper panel. So to do that, I'm going to turn my upper panel right side out and wrap it around this lower panel and we're going to align our side seams, make sure you're aligning the seam and not the top stitching and I'm going to use my clips and this should align evenly along all the raw edges now because my cork fabric is so stiff and it's a little bit unwieldy. I'm going to slide this under the foot and stitch on the cork wrong side.

So I'm sliding this under the foot and I'm using my half inch seam allowance back stitch and we're just going to stitch around the circumference of this bag, keeping my raw edges aligned and you kind of work your way around and pulling what was behind the foot back in front of the foot. Ok. Be careful as you go over your side scenes because you have kind of a lot of layers of cork and a lot of layers of canvas. So just take care your, like I said, Cork isn't thick, but any time you get a lot of layers, just take care. You might want to walk your um your needle using the hand wheel over those bulky side seams now because I don't want any raw edges at all on the inside of my bag.

And this canvas seems to want to fray quite a bit. I'm going to trim down the fabric seam allowance, only the fabric seam allowance down by half, leave that cork seam allowance where it is because those cork edges do not fray. You don't have to worry about those. So we're trimming these down and then we're going to in order to trap these raw edges, we're going to top stitch the sea as well. I'm kind of laying my scissors sideways, kind of flat against the fabric to make sure I don't accidentally trim those cork seam allowances.

All right. So those are all trimmed down. Now, we want to press our seam allowances upward. So we're pressing them up. So we are encasing those fabric raw edges.

So we're pressing these up and then we're going to top stitch a quarter inch from our seam. So I just wanna make sure that seam is pressed flat and then we're going to top stitch all the way around. And I'm going to take my, that part of my machine off to kind of help this get under the under the foot. So you can kind of feel with your fingers to make sure those seam allowances are going toward the canvas and top stitch. And as you're going over those straps, just be careful of all that bulk.

And I'm just kind of pulling the canvas up to make sure that that seam is nice and open and flat. So I'm coming across a scene here. So I'm just gonna slow down a little bit. I'm pulling the bag out from behind the foot back in front of the foot. So we're stitching kind of in a circle here.

And I'm still using my longer stitch length for this top stitching. So I'm using a three millimeter stitch length here's my other side sea. So we're gonna go kind of slow across it to make sure we don't run into any problems there. We're coming up to our seam beginning. So I'm gonna back stitch, trim our threads and take a look at what we've got.

So there is our grocery bag now on the inside because we did French seams. Those seam allowances are good and encased. The seam attaching our cork to our canvas is um encased because those raw edges aren't going to fray. And our fabric raw edges are um top stitched down. And there you have a bag that is strong and sturdy with nice strong straps to take either to the grocery store or to carry your things to the beach.

And this cork fabric gives an interesting and unique texture to your bag.