Lotus Flower Coat – starting to plan..

When we visited last year, my aunt gave me a lovely length of faience blue tweed, and although I could, of course, make a skirt (another skirt!), the idea eventually came to me to make it into a sort of cross between a cardigan and a jacket – something that I can wear with lots of things, that makes a good additional layer in our cold house, but looks cheerful and casually smart.

I thought about the colour, and some variant on the Egyptian Lotus Flower pattern seemed like a good start. Then I thought some more, and decided that the very graphic, formalised versions used in border patterns would want to be used formally and make the garment too formal. The tweed is relatively unfulled, and widely sett, so anything too structured won’t work well.

Something like this, I think. It’s a Simplicity pattern from the Seventies or early Eighties, and it won’t be hard to lengthen. It will be lined (which the pattern doesn’t call for), but there are few pattern pieces and almost no shaping.

Naturally, it won’t be going to go undecorated…!

Maybe a border pattern?

Somehow, no. I’ve not done one before – the Coat of Many Flowers has a swathe across the middle, and the Jacket of Many Stitches has the pattern dripping down from the shoulders – but I think it might end up looking a bit obvious, and a bit formal. I’ll still think a bit more about this one, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be this.

Watch this space, as they say…