The process of making a junco straw bag consists of several steps, if you decided to wear or style one of our bags, it would be nice for you to know where our bags originated and how they got to your hand. All of our process is made ethically and sustainably, read the following entry to understand how your cute little bag was brought to life...
1.Picking the straw
Junco is a plant that grows in humid places, normally near rivers, lakes and also “humedales” which are small lagoons in Peru. Junco is picked carefully by farmers or artisans as long as the plant meets the necessary conditions for its processing.
The junco plant in the wild, before being picked.
2. Drying the straw
Once picked, it’s packed and transported to an appropriate drying spot. The drying spot has to be on top of sand because if it’s soil or grass, the humidity will make the reed rot and never dry. Once at the drying spot, they will be spred in large quantities and will be exposed under the sun rays to dry. This takes 5-7 days during summer and more than 20 days during winter.
3. Dyeing the straw
Some bags require colors, so that means that colored straw will have to be made.
As a first step, we proceed to the selection of the material in thick, thin and fine conditions; as well as according to its hard, regular and soft variety. Then they’re dyed in small groups. To do this, we boil water in a container, add aniline (synthetic powder dye) and introduce the material already selected and moistened into the mix, letting it boil for 2 to 3 minutes. We will then rinse the dyed reed in a container with clean water and let the dry again. Once dried, the dyeing process is finally done and the junco straw is ready to make our designs.
Process of the production of the Fire Straw Bag
Process of the production of the Sol bag
4. Creating the design.
I was in my room in Montreal looking at inspiration on Pinterest before I took my pad and a pencil to sketch some ideas. Knowing the basics of weaving and having pictures of what colors our producer could make, I drew 4 bags detailing the colors, shape, size and stitches. Four months after 3 of the designs came to life. One of the two owner of La Playa went to Peru to meet the artisan behind these amazing bags.
Our first sketches of the bags we wanted.
Founder with the final samples.
The process of making a batch of bags takes more than 3 months. The samples, detailing and color swatching, started in the month of August 2020 and our samples were finally perfect in October. We only made 45 bags and the full batch took from October 14 to December 04 2020. We work with one artisan in a small coast village called Monsefu in Peru.
Monsefu, where they all come to life.