This book has several multi-color design crochet bags which use raffia or some material similar to it. The book is written in Japanese but has wonderful diagrams and pictures to teach you how to do your project. That is why I'm guessing the material used is raffia, because I can't read the book. So, I would say that if you, like me, don't speak Japanese, you probably should have experience in crochet and in reading diagrams. If you do, as I said before, the book is really good at visually explaining what to do.