Waxed Cloth Food Wrap

Make Waxed Cloth Food Wraps and give them away as  presents.

Do away with all that plastic cling film and make something that really works By Juliet Bawden 

Photographed by Antonia Attwood  MA RCA

This project is very easy to do, it smells delicious and it works. I had been reading about food wrap for a while and was curious, when happenstance made me do something about it. My neighbour, who keeps bees in my garden, presented me with a large piece of beeswax. I knew just how I could use it. I read lots of posts on line about different methods and possible additives to create the cloth, but in the end decided to do the simplest thing, just use the bee’s wax unadulterated on the cloth. Please note if you choose a white or pale background fabric and use bee’s wax, the yellow colour will come through into the design. Personally I like this as a look as it gives it a home spun feel. I recently wrote a post on this subject on 91 Magazine  blog. Since writing that I have been experimenting and found an even easier way to impregnate the cloth with wax and that is by ironing  it in between two layers of baking parchment.  

You will need

Closely woven cotton fabric, similar to a bed sheet in feel.

Wax – either grated, from a large block as this has been, or you can buy wax pellets on line.

Baking parchment 

Pinking shears

Step 1

 Using pinking shears cut round the edge of the material. By using pinking shears you will not need to hem the fabric.

Step 2 

Using a cheese grater, grate the bees wax. Wax is tougher to grate than cheese and it will stick to the grater. The wax will come off the grater when it is washed. 

Step 3

Cut out 2  pieces of baking parchment larger than the piece of fabric.  Place the fabric on top of one of the pieces of  baking parchment and sprinkle the bee’s wax evenly on the fabric.

Step 4

Place the other piece of baking parchment on top of the fabric and using a medium temperature, iron over the paper. You will see the wax melting and if the coverage isn’t even you can always lift the paper add more wax pieces and then recover with the paper before ironing again. Hang the fabric up to dry. Once the cloth is dry it will still feel slightly sticky and waxy but that is the nature of the beast.