Variants, Options and Custom Fields - Possible?

I have been reading that its not possible to have a huge amount of variants per product which leaves me in a dilemma on the best way to achieve what I need.

I have products which comes with the following options

"Colour/Finish" with varying Prices
"Size" with the options having different prices
"Type of Mechanisim"
"Colour of Cloth" no difference in pricing

Now im presuming the colour of cloth can/should be a custom item field with the options. The rest im assuming should be variants, but the colour finish has around 11 options, size around 3-5 and type another 3, so this would create quite a lot of variants.

Is there a way round this - I guess an alternative would be to create seperate products for the size - but would prefer to not have to do this.

If anyone has any ideas on how I should approach this I would be most grateful.

Thanks

Dave

Thank You Nicolas,

At least I have a better idea on how to move forward on this.

Thanks once again

Dave