Happy New Year 2014!

Dear all,

We are very sorry for the lack of new post in this blog. Somehow both of us ended up being busy with our life, which includes taking care of Filiandlino orders and working in the office. Nevertheless, we are aiming to be more active in 2014 with more blog posts, Etsy and Facebook listings.

But on top of that, from deep down inside, we would like to deliver our deepest gratitude to all our blog readers, fellow crafters and friends who always support us in every moments and occasions. 

Happy New Year 2014 from GMT +7. 

Hope the new year will bring more creativity, energy, ideas and happiness to us all

Much love,

Fili and Lino

Random Rambling Sunday: String/Strap Closure for Travel Wallet

Hola!

It's not sunday anymore, but better late than never.

So I've made quite a number of travel wallet, and this time, I would like to share another one. But it's different than the previous ones because I used different closure. I tried the string/strap closure with small pendant in the end of the string, similar to Indiana Jones' notebook but with a pendant. It's not that usual, but somehow it makes the wallet looks much more classy and unique, especially when I use the Etching fabric series from Moda.

Photos are taken with my mobile phone, so please bear the crappy quality.

That's all from Lino today.

Cheers!

Fili&Lino

Random Rambling Sunday: 7 Shades of Blue

Night, Fili here

I'll continue writing about double zippered pouch tonight. Recently, I tried different ways to make this pouch. I would like to find the simplest way to make this pouch so I won't get any headache any more. Finally, I get it! Now, the only thing that I need to do is to practice more. Fortunately, I got a chance to make this pouch for my friend's birthday present several days ago. She has two mobile phones and loves blue very much, so this is the result:

Random Rambling Sunday: Flowers, flowers everywhere

Hola, Lino here.

This is gonna be a very short post. I'm pretty much swamped in hundred of things that I have to do. Nevertheless, it's sunday, means it's Random Rambling Sunday time!

Today I would like to show you most of the flowers that we've made so far:

Flowers everywhere!

Random Rambling Sunday: Numbers don't lie

Night, Fili here :)


I'll talk about double zippers pouch this time.

 

One of our customer requested this double zipper pouch. We never made this kind of pouch before so we had to figure out how to make this pouch. After some trial and error, I finally figured how to make it. It's true when I said that I got headache in three days in row when I made this pouch. The result pouch was not very neat and symmetrical, it's really frustrating! After some examination here and there, I found out that my main problem is my inaccuracy. Accurate measurement is really important when making this pouch. Since I'm pretty careless with measurement, this pouch is really a challenging one. I'm someone who rely on my instinct too much! 

There are still some flaw about the trick on making this pouch. There are some difficulties appear in some step so I need to find out more. Though it is still a long way to go to perfect the trick, for now, I've learned my lesson: accurate measurement helps a lot.

See you Later!

Fili&Lino

Random Rambling Sunday: Stands!

Dear fellow Crafters,

Sorry we still haven't prepared any new tutorials or post about stuffs that we made. However, there are pretty much lots of interesting stuffs that we are going to make. Hopefully in our next post,we can share a little bit about those stuffs :D

For our third Random Rambling Sunday series, I would like to share some photos from events where we took part.

The first one is our first bazaar in a hospital. We were pretty crazy preparing the products since we also have to made all the orders in the same time. Even though we didn't sell too many things, we learnt lots of things. We prepared pretty much lots of kanzashi, some bags and accessories.

Our next bazaar is in a university in Bandung, West Java. This time, we have more products to display. Unfortunately we don't have any documentation for this event. Do you see the "flower pot" on the left? We hang our flower on a tree branch and "plant" it in a flower pot.

Last but not least, with a help of a friend, we finally "expand" our market to Canberra, Australia. These are the photos of the products that we brought to Canberra.

And these are the photos of the stand at ANU Open Day 2013.

Uhhuuyy! We had fun doing bazaar and we're planning to do more. But at the same time, with my schedule with work, the amount of custom order and the lack of supporting staff, we are still struggling to fulfil all the demand for bazaar and reseller. However, we are trying our best to create and make more, including blog posts XD


Ciao!

Lino from Fili&Lino

4th Giveaway Winner!

The online random picker has spoken. We would like to announce the winner of our 4th giveaway contest.

Beating not less than 27 people, the winner of our 4th giveaway contest is:

*insert drum rolls here*

Random Rambling Sunday 2: Make it Balanced!

Hello,

Now it's my turn, Fili, to ramble in this lovely sunday.

When I started 'Fili&Lino' with Lino, I slowly built my interest in mix-and-matching colors. I'm not used to it because I usually made something based on the need. I usually make something with simple design withut thinking much about the fabric. When we started working together, Lino kindly gave me advices on how to mix and match fabrics, what work best with the pattern, the colors, etc. At the moment, I have interest in Pastel color palette; the more I observed, the more I fell in love with it. I feel like each color has certain character and finding how these colors work with each other is a pretty interesting process. I learned that no matter how many colors or patterns combined, the most important thing is to keep the balance, and to find that balance, you just have to keep on trying until you find that perfect combination :D

That's all for now. Have a nice Sunday, everyone!

Fili&Lino

That fully-zippered wallet!

Dear fellow Crafters,

Seems like we're in the mood of making more blog posts :D Today I (we!) would like to share something that we separately made, but actually based on the same thing: fully zippered wallet!

Pilot

Second trial

Random Rambling Sunday 1: A little thought about lots of things

Hi fellow crafters,

It's Lino here and I would like to start a new series on this blog called Random Rambling Sunday. Basically I would like to share what I thought about craft and other stuff on Sunday.

Our 4th Giveaway!

We're just fully established less than a year but we are more than happy to give you our creations!

This time, we would like to give you these cute pouch and tote bag. Specially made for 1 (one) lucky winner.

How

Very easy. Just like this giveaway post on facebook, retweet our tweet, pin this post on pinterest. Your name/account will be automatically counted for the drawing. If you're still not sure whether you're name is on the drawing list or not, please fell free to e-mail us at filiandlino@gmail.com.

This competition will end on August 31, 2013, 23:59 PM GMT+7. 

This competition is open for... basically everyone.

Don't skip this chance and win this cute pair of pouch and tote bag!

Much love, Fili&Lino

Recycle Jeans/Denim Backpack Tutorial

Don't Throw Away Your Shabby Jeans! Cause we have an interesting tutorial that might help your lovely old jeans/denim to stay with you. We are turning your old jeans into a backpack! yes, a backpack, not a tote, not a handbag, but a backpack!

I must warn you guys before you decide to read this tutorial. There will be a lot of pictures involved here, so be prepared.

Back then...

Hello, Fili here



This is a short story about a bag that was born almost 9 years ago.

It's from leftover fabrisc. The color catched my interest. There is not enough fabric for the strap so I used matching chiffon fabric as the strap.

The chiffon was not strong enough to handle the bag and I was not familiar with interface back then so I braid the chiffon to make it stronger. I also sew flower shapes into the flap to make it less plain.

That's it, a very short story about my early work. My english is becoming rusty, it's been a while since the last time I wrote in full english *cough*we rarely update here*cough*. 

PS: For you who kindly read this, thank you for bearing it  with me guys, really.

See you later!

Fili

Fili&Lino Anniversary Giveaway!!

Whoever thought that Fili&Lino is already a year old? From a simple chat through two continents, finally we decided to make Fili&Lino a dream came true, exactly a year ago.

To celebrate our first anniversary, we are going to have not only one, but TWO GIVEAWAYS.

How to do it? Very easy. 
For our FIRST giveaway, just answer this superbly easy question
How many tutorials have we made in our blog?

Send your answer to our e-mail, filiandlino@gmail.com

BUT, be able to join this giveaway competition, you have to either follow us on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/filiandlino), like our fanpage on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/filiandlino), or favourite our shop at etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/filiandlino)

If you have twitter, please send us your answer and your twitter, so we can mention you right away if you win the competition

Our FIRST anniversary giveaway will be open until June 19 2013, 23:59 GMT+7

As usual, we will pick the winner by name drawing. Only participants with correct answer will take part in the drawing

This giveaway is open for international participants.

So, what are you waiting for? Go grab these two cuties ♥♥

A bunch of travel wallet

Holiday is in the air!

No wonder we received lots of travel wallet requests from friends and families. I've made not less than eight (!) travel wallet already. Pfiuuh. So today I would like to share you the wallet that I've made. I've mentioned about this travel wallet before, but this time, I have more of them with different fabrics :)

The wallet dimension is (about) w 23cm x h 21 cm. The pocket inside the wallet has to be wide enough to store a passport, put your boarding pass and other documents, but not too big to make it comfortable in your hand.

Warning: some photos are taken with my phone camera, hence the awful colour and photo quality.

The fabrics!

Hola, how's your midweek fellow crafters?

Living in a developing country has some drawbacks. The fabric prices here are superbly cheap ($1.5 - $4 per meter), but the quality is just not the same with the imported fabrics (what I mean by imported is the "branded" fabrics such as Kokka, Moda, Amy Butler, Riley Blake, etc). The thickness and the weight is different (our local cotton print fabrics are lighter). Not to mention when you wash our local cotton print, the colour will not be as bright as the imported one.

Regardless the fabric quality, one thing that really bothers me me is the design. Somehow the fabric designs are....not appealing. I know it's about taste, but when I used to see cute designs such as Robert Kaufman's Urban Zoology or sophisticated designs such as Amy Butlers, believe me, the prints at our local stores are just..... less appealing. Around 90% of the print fabrics here uses flower pattern. There are some interesting patten such as glasses and animals, but the execution is just bad! The colour combination are not very pleasing for the eye and the print is not very neat. To sum up: awful. It even makes me wonder, does our tastes in pattern and colours are that bad?

I am sure Fili will tell more about the fabrics quality here. But now, I would like to share my happiness because after weeks, my package from the US has finally arrived! I actually only wanted to buy a fabric from Moda's Hometown due to high demand, but since the shipping is up to 9m, I also bought other fabrics. Here they are!

Birdie Wallet

Hulo friends,

A friend asked me to make a wallet from one of my fat quarter fabric, Birds in Bermuda from Urban Zoology line by Ann Kelle for Robert Kaufman. I bought it at Quilt and Craft Fair in Canberra last year. It cost me around $3-$4 per fat quarter (believe me, the fabric price in Australia is EXPENSIVE!).

She asked me to make a three panel small size wallet. I have to say, sewing a bias binding on a wallet is not easy. Why? Because the thickness is different in every part, and it affect the bias binding, no matter how strong I stretched the fabric. There are places where I have 6 layers of fully interfaced fabrics, but there are places where I only have 2 layers! Regardless the messiness of the bias binding, here is the result!

A zippered coin pocket in middle panel

Inside the pocket

The inside. Two cards pocket on left and middle panel, one card pocket and one photo pocket on the right panel. I interfaced all the pockets with medium fusible interfacing.

As you can see, I sew the folded area with zigzag stitch and straight stitch to make it easier to fold. As for the photo frame panel, I sandwiched the plastic between interfaced fabric, so the photo frame is sturdy enough.

A small ring that can be used to attach a strap or to place a key and put it inside your wallet.

I'm a very peculiar person. Since our brand label is quite big, it doesn't fit anywhere! I tried to sew it in one of the pocket, and it didn't look good. So I attached it inside the money sleeve.

Neatly folded, which needs a little trick to sew it.

Why? Because if you have the same size inside and outside, when you put your cards/money inside, it will increase the thickness of the wallet and your wallet won't fold properly. That's what happened with my first wallet (that I gave to my housemate's daughter).  Since then, I always cut the inside area 1 cm shorter (width wise) than the outside.

Voila! 

That's the birdie wallet. Hope you enjoy it :D

Fili&Lino

Oh so shiny...

January 6th, my first time using cool sewing machine Brother CP 7500 at Lino's house. I need one day to stop thinking that I'll break it just by touching and adapting with the technological advances. All the

features of this sewing machine makes me amazed, especially the variety of patterned stitches. I was thinking of how many interesting shape that I can apply to every handmade I make! It really thrilled me.

That's for now, see you later :)

Fili&Lino

Burlap-but-not Clutch

Hola crafters, how's your weekend so far?

Today I would like so share my own party clutch. I've been obsessed with burlap since I found out how versatile it is. Not to mention I found this type of burlap that's very soft and smooth. I decided to combine this burlap with my fav Sea Garden Summer fabric from Cosmo Cricket. The size of this clutch is approx 27x17 cm. It's big enough for your wallet, mobile phone and some simple cosmetics. I also attached a strap so I can just hang it on my wrist. 

The design of this clutch is not very original. I used the flap pattern from Amy Butler's Style Stitches book. I add the width of the flap aroun 7 cm from the original. As for the lining, I used a cream cotton fabric and medium fusible interfacing for the flap and the burlap.

So yeah, basically if you found me at any party, you'll see me with this burlap clutch. Who says burlap can't go to party? 

Lino