Refashioning Dresses - Challenge in Print

A friend brought me three of her dresses to refashion. They were no longer worn (for various reasons) and she wanted them updated.
Challenge accepted!

This dress was bought a size too big.

 It needed to be taken in, so she put it on and we pinned the sides.
But we also found that the shape was still too much like a sack. I decided that it needed to be completely unpicked, darts put in the bust and then the whole thing put back together.

 What complicated it further was the pockets sewn into the sides.

I would need to copy how the dress was originally sewn to put it back together correctly.

Step 1 - unpick all the main seams. Now taking a seam ripper or a pair of scissors to someone else's clothes might see scary, but I've had enough practice on my own to be confident with a project like this. A $3000 dress might make me think twice... and advise them to take it back.

However with this dress I ended up having to cut it all open, because the pieces were all overlocked together and unpicking it wasn't worthwhile. I had to cut it down a size anyway, so no harm done.

 We had pinned darts in the bust, so I put them in before I overlocked.

 When I put the darts in, it shortened the front panel of the dress:

When I got to putting the front and back together, I had to create a new hem on the bottom that matched.

But before that happened, I had to get the pockets back in. Note to self: take a photo of the direction that the pockets are in before you pick something apart! I pulled a coat out of my cupboard that had similar pockets and used it to determine the direction and location.

 Tricky part: don't sew the pockets closed when you attach them!

 I had to attach them to the front and back panels separately to avoid this.

Then it was a matter of carefully sewing the long sides together. And here we are - successful pocket insertion.

 And the refashioned dress!