Creative Obsessions

I saw this coat back in Dec 2007 in the Sunday New York Times and I was so taken with it I wanted to make something like it. You know the feeling, that, "I could do THAT!" feeling. Not a copy (so call off your lawyers, Diane von Furstenburg), but instead something in the same spirit. I was delighted to find creamy heathered Italian wool coating at Gorgeous Fabrics, and even placed an order. But alas, Ann wrote me back later that day saying some designer had bought the entire bolt from her. In the nature of obsessions, I knew that MY coat had to be cream colored; no other color would do. (Curse you, anonymous designer person!) So I've been waiting, and thinking all year about how I would make a Narciso inspired coat. I wanted it to have clean lines, no collar, and double breasted. I wanted to start with a commercial pattern, because I did not want to draft my own. (Drafting my own was more work than I wanted to do. Obsession does not do away with laziness.) I bought some patterns, I studied articles on coat making, I made notes in my Idea Notebook. Months went by. Then this week, I saw the pattern I wanted to make.
Vogue 8520 - look! Vogue even obligingly showed the jacket in cream! They were trying to tell me: MAKE THIS COAT. Of course, I did not notice this pattern while they were having their sale. They buried it all the way at the end of their new fall patterns, and didn't even show one made up in the magazine. So I didn't notice it at first. But this pattern has possibilities. It is double breasted. It has no collar. It has princess seaming for easy fitting opportunities, and I love the shaped hem. It calls for Lightweight Tweed, Double-sided Fleece and Boucle. Oh Vogue, you teasers, I sure hope you don't mean POLAR FLEECE. (Cause THAT ain't gonna happen - what would Narciso say?). And they even say that the pattern is VERY EASY. Now I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, Vogue pattern people. I am pretty sure that a pattern described as a, "Loose-fitting, lined jacket has sleeve and hem length variations, yoke, raglan sleeves, princess seams and snap closures. B, C: side front seam pockets. C: tucks at sleeve hem and shaped front hemline" is not MY idea of VERY EASY. (My idea of very easy is making pajama pants or a T shirt.)
Also this project would require BUYING FABRIC. I don't have any cream colored wool boucle, or creamy lightweight tweed just laying around.(This is not to imply that there is no wool coating in the stash, oh no. But no coating this color!) Would it count as falling off the Fabric Rehab wagon if I only bought fabric to make this coat? So practical, and THINK of all the money I'd save, since the original version was many thousands of dollars? Why, I can't afford NOT to make a new coat! (You see how addicts can make excuses to induge their weaknesses?) To Be Continued...