 ow did I make my choli pattern, and what problems did I encounter along the way?
 y choli pattern is based upon the Kwik Sew pattern, number 2632. As you can see from the pic, it needed a lot of modification to get it to work as a "V" necked, backless choli, but it was a good place to start. Alaine Haddon-Casey, who was my ATS teacher back in 2002, recommended this pattern to all of her students as an excellent first choli.
 f course, it has since undergone dozens of alterations and modifications - so much so that it now does not resemble the original pattern at all!
 he first one that I made was a very simple garment made of two-way stretch lycra. The plan was to use the Kwik Sew pattern, but modify it so that the choli would tie at the back instead of the front. Starting with the basic pattern, I cut and sewed and pinned and snipped and cut and sewed some more until I finally achieved a wearable garment!
n the back, I trimmed away a lot of excess fabric so that the back would sit smoothly. The first "V" front was a disaster. I am a D cup and simply cutting a "V" in what was the back of the original pattern did not work. No where NEAR enough fabric to cover my bust. I finally ended up pinning a piece fabric to my bra (while I was wearing it) and cutting away all the excess. After it was unpinned, I trimmed away all the obvious raggedy bits to give a smooth line, and then used this as my choli front.
 t ended up being a lovely comfortable choli that I still sometimes wear for class. And because of the way it ties at the back, you can wear a bra with it!
 s comfortable as it was, I felt that it was no where near special enough for performance, so I made another. This time I used a simple woven fabric (cotton broadcloth) for the font, and spandex for the back and sleeves. This was a whole new ball game! Whilst the back and sleeves were fine, the non-stretch cotton front felt like a straight jacket! *grin* Back to the drawing board... I had to come up with a whole new pattern for the front. Once again, I pinned the fabric to my bra and cut away the excess. Of course, being a woven fabric, I had to insert several darts to get a nice form fitting shape. After a few adjustments, I ended up with a lovely choli ... and then spent many patient hours doing lots of gorgeous Shisha work, beading and embroidery. 
 hile this choli was beautiful, I could not wear a coin bra over it - too many mirrors and beads for that! So I returned to my original choli pattern and made a new red spandex one for performance.
t this stage, my choli still had the same knot-it-at-the-back effect (which I liked because I could still wear a bra with it), but now I wanted to change to the classic "backless" look of the FCBD choli. A couple of my tribal sisters at that time had also been experimenting with the same Kwik Sew pattern. They lent me their pattern and I compared our efforts. Not surprisingly, we had each come up with almost the exact same pattern - the only real difference being that their back had been cut away instead of knotted.
love the jewel-toned colours of panne velvet, so I now modified my original pattern for use with panne velvet. The main difference was that panne is one-way stretch instead of two-way. I did not think that would make a great deal of difference... but it did! No vertical stretch meant that my pattern front needed to be cut longer to give extra underarm stretch when you lift your arms! I toyed with the idea of inserting a gusset, but ended up not needing to. One bonus with the panne velvet was that no vertical stretch meant that it actually provided a nice bit of bust support!!
mmmm... now my panne choli fitted, did not ride up when I lifted my arms, and was comfortable... but with no bra I seemed to have a mono-boob!!! *Oh NO!* I just HAD to get a nice shape happening in there! The darts had worked very well for my cotton choli, so I then drafted darts into my pattern - a regular under-bust dart and one right in the center front seam. I tried various other placings for them, but this combination worked really nicely for me.
he simple turned and hemmed neck edges were too scruffy for my liking and the panne tended to stretch along the neck edge too much, so I decided to add a bias binding finish. It worked perfectly and made the neck edges firmer and sit very smoothly.
t this stage I had about 8 different versions of my choli. Each one improving on the last. The only thing that bothered me now were the bands. I had been using 1" wide cotton twill tape for the choli bottom and 1/4" wide for the neck ties. It annoyed the heck out of me that I could never match the colour of the tapes to the colour of the choli. So I decided to actually use the panne velvet itself to make the bands and ties. What an incredible difference it made! I was now finally satisfied. Here is the final version of my choli ... and those are D cups with no bra in there!!
 ext challenge? Some of my non-sewing tribal sisters needed cholis, so I offered to make some for them. The only trouble being they were both much smaller than I (in both frame and cup size). I thought I had it all worked out, and simply scaled down the pattern pieces. It sounded like a good idea, but the small cholis did not fit as nicely as I wanted them to. Back to the drawing board again! Eventually, after more adjustments and fine-tuning, I came up with my small sized pattern, and thankfully it fitted them both perfectly!
 ince then, as our tribe has grown, more sizes have been needed! I now have patterns in small (A-B cup), medium (B - C cup) and large (C - D cup), and the extra large size (DD plus) is in the final tweaking stage. When I find the time, I shall update the patterns on this site to include all four sizes.
Back to the Choli Pattern
Happy dancing!
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