2021 - Volume #45, Issue #6, Page #07
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Her Feed Sack Handbags Are A Big Hit
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“The graphics, colors and durable cotton that’s easy to sew. It’s fun. It’s happy. You can’t replicate them,” she says.
With a couple of decades’ experience designing and making high-end bags in Singapore, then a line of bags made from Japanese kimonos, Seet started collecting feed, seed and flour sacks made 70 to 80 years ago. At her first show in Los Angeles, she sold her first bag to a woman who lived on an Iowa farm.
But rural folks aren’t her only fans.
“Urban people love the nostalgia part of it. And those doing backyard chickens like the chicken feed sacks. In LA, customers just like them for the images,” Seet says.
Small bags range from $39 to $65 and other bags start at $130. She sells them on Etsy and at shows and fairs. For example, she has a line of bags for Case IH and creates new canvas bag designs each year for large state fairs such as Minn. and Iowa. Best sellers in each state tend to follow the type of seed sold in each state - from Pioneer to Dekalb to Funk Farms.
Finding bags that were made into the 1950’s is getting more challenging, but she buys them from antique dealers, private collectors, and others who find sacks for her. Sacks with pictures of horses and dogs are the hardest to find.
“I work with all types of things - seed and feed sacks, ammo bags, vintage hankies, aprons, mechanic rags - whatever I can cut,” she says.
“It’s just so satisfying to transform a product that would otherwise be stored away in a barn for years and never taken out,” she says on her Etsy description.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Selina Vaughan Studios, (www.etsy.com/shop/selinavaughan; Facebook - Selina Vaughan Studios).
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