Costume Workshop: Banjara Choli

I'm excited to present this Costume Workshop on Friday 8 Nov at the FatChanceBellyDance® Studio.
If you can't make it in person, I'll try to document it to share here on my Blog.



Let's get started!

Banjara Choli
We'll be looking at a mysterious little choli and recreating it in your size.
I have several for us to examine and one that we can take apart to understand the construction and ultimately make the patterns.

Here's what you will need to bring:

The equivalent of 1 1/2 yards of fabric: 80% should be a woven cotton for the body of the choli. We'll be cutting the body cloth into squares and rectangles so it's OK if you have multiple pieces, as long as they are approx. 8x10". 20% can be decorative bits for trim, these can be any sort of fabric. It's important that the body of the choli be a woven cotton because the unique fit of this garment is due in large part to the drape of the fabric over the shoulders. A stiff, tightly woven fabric or synthetic fabric won't yield the same results. A stretch cotton will lose it's shape. We'll be talking more about this during the class. Iron everything ahead of time if you can.

If you have one of these cholis please bring it for us to look at. Also bring any other banjara choli, belt or pieces that you might want to use for parts or trim.

A needle and several colors of cotton thread for hand sewing.

A notebook and pencil if you want to take notes or sketches.

Scissors, make sure they are sharp. Fabric scissors should only be used for cutting cloth.

Straight pins for pinning fabric. Best pins have glass heads so you can iron over them (plastic heads can melt.) Pins with flat heads are OK, but can get lost in the fabric and are hard to pick out.

Seam ripper and tape measure.

That's all for now, I'll let you know if I think of anything else. If you can only bring one thing, bring the fabric. I'll have plenty of supplies. I have pattern paper and paper scissors and an iron.