Last week I dropped into my favourite fabric store.  It is over 100km from home so I don’t get there that often.  In some ways that is a good thing as it is like being in a lolly shop – so many gorgeous fabrics that sometimes it is hard to choose.  On this trip three fabrics followed me home.  The first two are off-white solids – a silk cotton shirting and a textured knit for a jacket.

The third is a wool plaid with a mix twill weave with a brushed face.  My alarm bells should have been going off  (plaid + nap = layout nightmare) but I loved the colours and pixel like look to the fabric.  My initial thought was to make a light coat with it.  Most of the patterns I looked at required more fabric than I bought, so adding nap and plaid to the mix was going to make it hard.  One option was not to use a facing. The back of the fabric was similar to front, but without the brushed face so just have a single layer of fabric with a trim or fringe at the edge could work.     Another was to use a plain colour, most likely black, for the sleeves.

These were the front-runners:

	Alexander McQueen knock-off:  The plaid has a similar scale and the pattern is very similar to the purple pea coat I made a couple of years ago – just need to make the centre front asymmetric.  Would need to buy extra fabric and dye some silk for the lining, but it would certainly be an eye-catcher of a coat.  But I have the purple one already.
	V8933 – short version with the colour blocked sleeves and no facing.  I’d need to reduce the collar height so I could still wear the collar open. Pattern matching relatively straight forward.  Will this style suit me and would I be restricted to always having it done up?  How often would I wear it?
	Schnittequelle jacket – They have a lot of patterns for boiled wool so I had a look through their patterns.  Ooooh, I love this pattern.  The style lines are very clever and I like the way the collar folds over.   Designed for a single layer.  Very tempting although the pattern plus shipping would work out to over AU$40 and it’s only single size too.  Hmmmm, I could buy another metre of fabric for that
	After doing a images search on “plaid jackets” to get a few other ideas, a couple of photos of oversized shirts came up. Not quite what I had in mind initially for the fabric, as it is a little heavier, but it would be something I would wear a lot more than the coat patterns I’d been looking at. I had the perfect pattern too. I’ve already made a couple of 6oz denim shirts with it that I wear in the mid-seasons. A warm woollen version would be so good!

The pattern matching is going to be challenging, but I’ve got enough fabric to play with.  And so the nightmare layout begins….