Sewing tutorial - Man style large shirt to feminine top Part 1

 I am back to sewing after a tough semester. I am attacking a small wardrobe of clothes to alter. One of them is a large shirt. The only thing feminine about it is that it has shiny buttons and buttons like a woman's shirt. It's made of a flowy, black knit fabric. Not easy to work with, but I want to see what I can do.

This is the shirt.

And this is the inspiration

I have no idea how this is going to turn out in the end, and I will be figuring things as I go. My goals are:

1) As mentioned above, feminize the shirt

2) Tailor it to fit me

For now, it seems the process should be:

1) cut out the collar, the button band, and the button hole band.

2) Sew the shirt down the front and create channels for the lacing. 

3) Work on the sleeves. Bring in the shoulder seams to reduce the size of the arm holes. I will detach the sleeves at the shoulder seam then sew them back up again, ruffling them to fit the shorter seam. Hopefully this will allow me to create puffed sleeves. With the flowy fabric, this might not work. The other option is slit sleeves. 

4) Do a fitting and see what else needs to happen to the body of the shirt to make it fit. Likely sew the sides to create shaping at the waist. If that's not sufficient (there may be a lot of extra fabric in the back panel), add darts in the back. I could do more lacing, but I don't want to go crazy with that.