I first posted about this dress on TSF years ago when I was making it to wear to prom and it turned out that attempting a complicated pattern (or even a simple one involving so much fabric in the skirt...) during exams was not a good idea. I ended up going with the side seam pinned together and the neckline and skirt hem finished by melting the raw edge over a candle (I'm not joking) and the neckline details missing. Then I hid it at the back of the wardrobe and pretended it didn't happen.
But now I need a dress for a party so I've taken it out to see if it can be saved. It's V1094 and it really didn't suit me. I took two panels out of the skirt but even then it swamped me and the gathering on the skirt is uneven and messy. It also has a dropped waist which I would never normally wear, made worse by the fact that the waist was too loose and made me look shapeless. The internal construction is a mess and absolutely nothing is finished properly. I'm thinking the best plan of action is to take is to take the skirt off and remove the lining. I'm going to attempt to put the neckline bands on properly because that's the detail that originally drew me to the dress. I'm not sure whether to try to salvage the skirt by redoing the gathers properly or to try to cut a new one from the pieces - normally if I'm wearing a full skirt I prefer circles or part circles, and I could maybe squeeze panels to make a circle from the existing skirt pieces. I still have the two that never made it into the skirt plus some other bits of extra fabric. Whatever I end up doing will be attached on my waist instead of below it and hopefully the final product will be something I'm happy to wear without fear of it disintegrating if I move. And if it doesn't work then at least I was only trying to salvage an earlier disaster! I've attached a photo of it from the day of the prom as a before, and now the unpicking begins. Any ideas for ways to rescue it would be greatly appreciated!