Making Pinup Alice in Wonderland: Finding the dress and altering it to perfection

So, a while back I managed to swap a few pieces of clothing for a dress my lovely and talented friend Jessie made, her Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/QueenieTheCutieCostumes .

And I thought it would be perfect for a pinup Alice in Wonderland, so I had to start the task of altering the dress to make it perfect for how I wanted my style of Alice to look.

This is the original dress on the maker of it.

So, first of all I unstitched the skirt and bodice as its was quite a bit too big. i decided to alter the bodice neckline to suit more of a pinup look first.

I cut a sweet heart neckline and fitted it to my body. This is how it looked when I cut it.

After this, I focused on the skirt, I decided to make the skirt a gathered skirt instead of a pleated skirt, as I am not skilled enough to do pleats well. I also took about 5 inches of off the skirt as I am only 5.0'

I then attached the gathered skirt to the bodice and added the zip again. After this I also added the hemming the bottom of the skirt, and used the Biased Binding Jessie had made on the top of the bodice.

Once this was done, I obviously put it on my dress form to get a picture of the finished product (oh also a picture of it on me with a petticoat and without :) 

I will be making my own pattern for the apron and making another write up about when that's made and when the whole outfit is together :)