This paper is a study of the bases introduced by Chari-Loktev in [1] for local Weyl modules of the current algebra associated to a special linear Lie algebra. Partition overlaid patterns, POPs for shortwhose introduction is one of the aims of this paper-form convenient parametrizing sets of these bases. They play a role analogous to that played by (Gelfand-Tsetlin) patterns in the representation theory of the special linear Lie algebra.The notion of a POP leads naturally to the notion of area of a pattern. We observe that there is a unique pattern of maximal area among all those with a given bounding sequence and given weight. We give a combinatorial proof of this and discuss its representation theoretic relevance.We then state a conjecture about the "stability", i.e., compatibility in the long range, of Chari-Loktev bases with respect to inclusions of local Weyl modules. In order to state the conjecture, we establish a certain bijection between colored partitions and POPs, which may be of interest in itself. The stability conjecture has been proved in [6] in the rank one case.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 17B67 (05E10). Key words and phrases. Gelfand-Tsetlin pattern, Chari-Loktev basis, Demazure module, partition overlaid pattern, POP, area of a pattern, stability of Chari-Loktev bases.The second named author acknowledges support from CSIR under the SPM doctoral fellowship scheme. The first and third named authors acknowledge support from DAE under a XII plan project. 1 One of our aims in the present paper is to clarify the parametrizing set of this Chari-Loktev basis. Towards this end we introduce the notion of a partition overlaid pattern or POP (see §2.8). Dominant integral weights for g = sl r+1 may be identified with non-increasing sequences of non-negative integers of length r + 1 with the last element of the sequence being 0. Gelfand-Tsetlin patterns (or just patterns-see §2 for the precise definition) with bounding sequence (corresponding to) λ parametrize the Gelfand-Tsetlin basis for V (λ). Analogously, as we show in §4.6, POPs with bounding sequence λ parametrize the Chari-Loktev basis for W (λ). The weight of the underlying pattern of a POP equals the h-weight of the corresponding basis element and the number of boxes in the partition overlay determines the grade.The notion of a POP leads naturally to the notion of the area of a pattern (see §2.3). For a weight µ of V (λ), it turns out that the piece of highest grade in the µ-weight space of the local Weyl module W (λ) is one dimensional (the h-weights of W (λ) are precisely those of V (λ)). We give a representation theoretic proof of this fact in §4. This suggests-even proves, albeit circuitously-that there must be a unique pattern of highest area among all those with bounding sequence λ and weight µ. We give a direct, elementary, and purely combinatorial proof of this in §3.In §6, we state a conjecture about the "stability" of the Chari-Loktev basis. To describe what is meant by stability, let θ be the highest root of g. We then have nat...