Blue Meisen Bag Set

Meisen bag

For this set, I accomplished two things – I managed to wash the fabric with minimal bleed (yay!) and no dye transfer (not an easy feat – Meisen is notoriously finicky fabric) and I developed a “look” for both pieces. The original bag pattern is courtesy of Miko Craft a bag maker from Jakarta, Indonesia. He has created wonderful patterns and tutorials for bags and when I charged down this path to make things from narrow fabric his patterns were a great resource because they often require narrower pieces of fabric.

Clutch

Once I had created the main bag using Miko’s specifications, I was able to design the clutch and use a flex frame.

Flex frame clutch

Both bags include expandable pleats made from habotai silk from the inside of a kimono. The red fabric was from a very old kimono that was disintegrating and what you see in this bag was all that I could salvage. The red bag is lined in red cotton from another Meisen kimono to assure that the contents are not putting strain on the delicate silk. Cotton linings are pretty common in Meisen garments, perhaps because these were “off the rack” garments rather than the custom kimono worn prior to their development.

Stay tuned for a later article on Meisen kimono.