80's knit dress to Chanel-esque dress Refashion

I thrifted this big huge 80's coral cotton knit dress and jacket set last year. I thought it was a good deal of material for a few dollars. I had no idea what to do with them until I saw this:

I liked the look of the dress but I thought it looked a bit too fussy. My baby girl would surely like to yank on the front tie or the buttons. So I decided to refashion the coral dress into a simplified version of this Chanel dress.

I know it doesn't look exactly like the inspiration but I actually prefer the simpler version. The steps I used to refashion this:
1. The dress was HUGE. I first washed and tumble-dried it and it shrunk a bit in width and a lot in length. I cut off 4cm from the centre front, 4cm from the centre back, 3 cm from each side seam.
2. I sewed on a black grosgrain ribbon all the way down the centre front.
3. I redrafted the neckline and then sewed a piece of black ribbed knit to form the new neckline.
4. I ripped out the pockets from the jacket and added them to the dress. Unfortunately I damaged the pockets slightly when ripping them out. You can see that they are a bit wonky. I added black grosgrain ribbon to the top of the pockets.  I used the buttons from the jacket to add to the  pockets.

I usually wear this dress with leggings. It's super comfortable. The pockets are nice features as well as essential for a mom with 2 young kids.

As for the jacket, I have grand plans to make a tunic and pants for my baby girl for the Fall. There is still plenty of material for that.