Brown Suede Jacket with Twin Needle Embellishment

In June 2009 I was one of the demonstrator's of the Twin Needle Workshop at a Sewing Guild meeting in Marryatville, South Australia. I had been asked in April to do this alongside a few other sewing guild members. Now I was definitely out of my depth, I had only used the twin needle to do hems on knit tops. So up for the challenge I did as much reading as I could about the subject, and then the fun stuff started with playing around with twin needles. I decided to focus on the embellishment side and decided to create a jacket using pattern 3521 from McCalls. I had used this pattern previously so I didn't have to bother with getting the fit right (what a relief!).

I had seen a photo of twin needle work that had been done in a wave motion using a pin tuck foot, and it looked spectacular.









Materials for this project were

- 2.5m of Chocolate Brown Suede, with slight stretch from Spotlight
- 2m of Satin Animal Print with pink splashes from Spotlight for the lining
- Guttermann Sulky 4011 for the twin needle work which is variegated
- Guttermann 696 (chocolate brown) for bobbin thread
- 5 groove pin tuck foot
- 2.5/80 Twin Needle


It took a bit of playing around to get the look that I was after, but finally settled on a normal tension (4.0), and shortened stitch length of 1.8. Using the 5 groove pin tuck foot raised the fabric slightly to give a 3 dimensional look.

First I cut the fabric along the crosswise grain the length of the front + 10cm, then in chalk drew about 5 lines in a wave motion. I then stitched out these. Drew another 5 lines and stitched, and so on until the entire strip had been stitched. Then I cut another piece of the fabric the length of the sleeve plus 10cm and did the same thing. From this I cut out all of the pattern pieces.

Then it was time to put it all together. I included pockets in the seam of the princess line along with a zip as I found that the pockets on the previous jacket I made kept gaping opening which wasn't very flattering. I also added piping along the princess seam lines, side seams, under the arm, the top of the collar and where the jacket facings meet the lining. At the top of the armhole (inside the jacket) I added a strip of the brown suede as a sleeve head as it didn't sit very well without the extra support.

All in all I'm happy with the jacket, but I'm not sure when I'll do it again as the twin needle work did take a long time to do and caused a bit of pain in the thumbs as I guided the material through the sewing machine.








The back of the jacket, I don't think it would have looked very good without the piping.


















Inside View of Jacket - I really loved the colour of this lining, it went really well with the fabric and the thread I used for the twin needle work.

















A closeup of the back where the facing meets the lining. Once again the piping gives it a very nice defined edge.