The next project

I've recently made several bow ties for Robin, because he fell in love with a picture of Willy Wonka wearing one.  So the logical next step was to try to create a purple jacket.  

That has been challenging to plan.  The only pattern I could find for a jacket for a young boy was a rather complicated and overly formal one - so that will have to be adapted to a more flamboyant style, with bigger lapels and hopefully some tails!  I found some very cheap synthetic velvet look stuff on the internet and bought a couple of metres - so there should be some spare if I make a complete mash up of something.

For much of my life, I would have said this was totally beyond me - I could work to a pattern, but to use my imagination to alter and adapt things was beyond my nerve.  Recently I've been more ready to try, but getting started is always the worst moment.  And at the moment, I'm struggling to work out which bit of the pattern I need to "extend" to make a bigger lapel - and I don't think I can dissect one of W's jackets to work it out!  So as it was gone 4 by the time I had cleared the decks enough to lay this out, I decided discretion was the better part of valour, and put off cutting till tomorrow.