Minor Dress Renovation

 I made a dress in early 2020, one of the many loose tunic dresses I was making a few years ago, that I liked enough to keep when I donated a lot of those dresses a while ago.

I recently realized that I could easily modify the bodice to have a (somewhat) closer fit and back zipper, and that's the first project I did once I got the bustier/waist cinchers out of my system

It's not a huge difference, but it does fit a bit better now (and works pretty well with a waist cincher...)

I picked out the waist stitching, then cut the very bottom edge of the bodice off right by the serging, to preserve the gathering. I then folded the bodice flat at the center front, then center back, so I could use another pattern--Simplicity 9862

--to cut new bodice sides, leaving everything else intact, including the sleeves and side seams right under the sleeves.

I resewed the side seams and re-attached the skirt, easing in the slight extra width while sewing.

Which was pretty easy to do, since it was only a few inches smaller, and the already-gathered area was easy to squish into more gathers.

The bigger undertaking was adding a center back zipper.  The bodice had a center back seam, plus cutting the new bodice edges included cutting on either side of that, so it was straightforward up there.

The weirdness was on the skirt.  I did not want to re-stitch any of the hem, so I found the center of the skirt back, snipped the edge, and pulled a thread for maybe 8" (what, me, measure?) and cut along that.

I then re-attached the skirt to the bodice (doing the previously-mentioned gather squishing) and basted the entire back opening and awkwardly installed the zipper.

I guess I should note: since there is currently a heat wave and I did not want to use the iron, I aggressively finger pressed the zipper seam allowances.  And it worked!

The weirdness at the bottom of the slash is lost in the print.

I probably could have added the back darts from Simplicity 9862, and I probably will if I intentionally make a dress like this in the future.

It's funny, because I had thought I'd have no use for Simplicity 9862, because I'm not built for dropped waists. When I decided to modify this dress, though, I discovered that I currently have no patterns with standard dress bodices (and I didn't feel like printing and assembling one of the many free PDF patterns for that kind of bodice, or taking the time to generate one from scratch.)    This does open up possibilities.

I made the alterations yesterday and wore the dress today and I know the work was slapdash and it's fine.