Valentine Girl

That title actually is a song title. "Valentine Girl" from New Kids on the Block. Not sure if they were describing a girl as a "valentine girl" or if they were addressing the object of affection as "girl". Like, "Will you be my valentine, girl?"
You don't even know what I'm talking about. Here's the "before" incarnation of my Valentine's day dress:

It was great, it looked like a big sack of nothing, thus easy to work with. It's made of a polyester-textured material. I really liked the shirred waist which had sadly lost its elasticity over the years as had the elastic around the cuffs.
I was just planning on wearing it to school for our little first grade party. I was envisioning a cheapo version of a romantic era dress.

What?

Actually no, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I guess I was thinking about bell sleeves, jacquard ribbon, cameo jewelry, and velvet. Ummm...the period costumes from the 1994 adaptation of Little Women?

I could only find a few pictures of this lovely gown worn my Winona Ryder as Jo March. I went for a veeery loose inspiration of that.
First thing I did was remove the nasty old elastic from the sleeves before figuring out how to deal with that waist. I had a trick in my pile of sewing supplies that could totally work.

(Made big to show details of package.) Looks like you just sew it on and then pull those little elastic strings. How could that go wrong? Did I mention this is a secondhand item that came in a big box of notions?

(Once again; picture embiggened.) This doesn't even show the full scope of damage this damn thing caused. You see, after sewing the damn thing in place I went to pull the elastics only to have them disintegrate into waxy little pieces that become stuck during the process. Oh, it was nasty.
At this point, I really should've given it up. This is not some one of kind, designer piece. It was a non-remarkable, simple shapeless dress made of acrylic fabric.
But I'm stubborn and not in the good way. Have you heard of the sunk cost fallacy?
It's defined as "Reasoning that further investment is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in the further investment." Here's the source.
So, I sat down in front of the TV and seam ripped out the whole thing. At this point, I had used up all the perfectly matched thread from a small spool that I happened to have on hand. I would have to buy more. (Once again; I should've just tossed the thing.)
New thread in hand, I decided I might as well take in the dress just a tiny bit.

Nope, needed to be taken in quite a bit more. Unpinned and repinned and finally sewed.
Now...the waist. I sure as hell wasn't going to re-shir it. What I did was sew in a wide elastic band and didn't take any damn pics. You just pin it on and the stretch the elastic while sewing.
I also lowered the neckline and cut off a few inches from the bottom. I considered using this awesome ribbon that I knew I had stashed for something, possibly the neckline.

When I went to retrieve said ribbon, I realized all I had was the tiny section seen here. I'm sure it could've been useful, but I had wasted too much time for creativity. The after:

Not exactly exciting, but comfortable and practical. I do have several cameo style necklaces, but I went with the roses pendant on a chain.

Here's the side by side:

I have so many mostly completed projects that I want to show off. So...I'll get right on that.