Antalya Dress Review

Now it’s time to tell you more about my girl look for my All That Glitters sew along entry.  To be honest, a glittery, sparkly girl look is much easier than a boy look!  Here’s the outfit details again:

Dress Pattern:  Antalya Dress by Coffee & Thread

Dress Fabric: Wild & Free Knit Midnight Roof  designed by Maureen Cracknel for Art Gallery Fabrics (affiliate link)

Leggings Pattern:  Slim Trousers by Lil Luxe Collection

Leggings & Fingerless Gloves Fabric: Stretch Panne Velvet Velour Soft Gold Fabric from fabric.com (affiliate link)

A while back I won the Antalya dress designed by my sewing friend Olga of Coffee & Thread.  Olga is an amazing lady, from her patterns to her photography, I feel like a student whenever I interact with her.  That’s what it’s like sewing the Antalya dress, I learned a few new things even though I’ve been sewing for more years that I can remember!

The Antalya dress can be made in 12 sizes from 12-18 months all the way to 12 years.  It has dolman sleeves, gathering, an exposed zipper, and piping on the curved side panels.  Swoon!

On the advice of Rachel who blogs over at Stitched Together, I lengthened the Antalya dress like she did when she sewed hers.  Our kids seem to have the same body shape, and I wanted the dress to last through the summer.  This is a very easy modification of the pattern as the skirt pieces are rectangular and length can be added to those rectangles.  For reference, I cut I size 7 width, size 12 length and added 4 inches!

This pattern has drawn illustrations, and they are very thorough.  At no time during the construction of the dress was I confused and didn’t make any mistakes, which speaks to it’s competence.  I also used the linked tutorial for making my own piping, because this dress needed gold glittery piping!

I used this exposed zipper (just like on this skirt) from Amazon:

Let me tell you, Olga’s instructions for installing this zipper result in a beautiful, finished zipper every time.  The  pattern also includes instructions for a button placket instead of a zipper.  I will definitely be making another Antalya dress in the future, and more Coffee + Thread patterns too.

I used Wild & Free Knit Midnight Roof fabric designed by Maureen Cracknel for Art Gallery Fabrics.  Like all Art Gallery Fabrics I’ve used it’s soft, supple, and a dream to sew with.  I chose it because of the metallic accents.  This fabric was sitting in my stash for a little while, and when I saw the Project Run & Play themes, I just knew it was time to use it!  I seem to turn to Art Gallery Fabrics for the material for all special dresses I make for this girl!

The leggings are Lil Luxe Collection’s Slim Trousers.  You can read my review and see the other pair I made in this blog post.

The fingerless gloves I made by modifying the Scarlett Legwarmers pattern.  They didn’t turn out as great as I had hoped.  In my mind I had pictured them more fitted like the ones Courtney made last week for her Cosplay outfit.  But I did take photos for a tutorial as I went, so let me know if you’re interested and I’ll write it up.  The buttons on the fingerless gloves are glitter covered.  The glitter got everywhere when I was sewing them on, with gold thread, of course!

Okay, that’s it for my All That Glitter looks.  Head on over to Project Run & Play to see all the rest of the sew along.  And did you see what the contestants sewed?