Surgery on a jacket

Last year for Easter I decided on sewing a suit.  The fabric  - a silk herringbone.  Two colours - pale blue and pale green.  (Remind me of Easter egg colours.)  I picked up the two pieces at Fabricland in a section they call "designer suiting".  One of the "junk piles" at the back of the store (but always worth digging through).  Not quite enough of either piece for a whole outfit, but I thought that they went together well.  So - skirt was to be green, and the jacket in the blue with green trim.  Sewed the skirt.  Sewed a blouse in an off-white eyelet.  So far, so good.  Started on the jacket.  Even made a muslin!  Quite a bit of tweaking needed there, but everything went along just peachy.  Guess you might want to see the jacket pattern.

Burda 8949 - and you can even see what I paid for it.  Anyway, all went very well.  Then I decided that I wanted keyhole buttonholes.  My machine makes very ugly ones.  I headed over to the store to use one of the machines there.  Picked one of the fanciest machines on the floor.  It really does make nice-looking buttonholes.  Sewed samples - many times over.  I was quite pleased with how this was all going to work out.  Buttonhole #1 - perfect.  Buttonhole #2 - perfect.  Buttonhole #3 - disaster.  Huge wad of thread underneath.  I tried picking it out, but that proved to be impossible, because the picking/ripping was ruining the fabric.  I got a brilliant idea - why not cut out the buttonholes within a shape and cut the same shape around the perfect sample buttonholes, drop them into the holes and satin stitch around.  Went home and did just that.  The cutting was done with an exacto knife.  Everything fit perfectly, but somehow the stitching made things wonky.  At that point I decided to leave things as they were.  I did have a top and a bottom to wear, and I thought that I would come up with something later.  A year later, here's  the mess as it stands (or may-be I should say lays).

(The jacket landed in a basket, and that's why it's all rumpled and sad.)  Too much work invested to just throw this all away.  Can't recut a front, because this is all I have left to work with.

Game plan is this - slot buttonholes.  I cut away the front just past the buttonholes.  Cut strips that will be between the buttonholes, which themselves will be part of the seams.  Does any of this make sense?  I've worked this all out in my head.  It should work.  Scary part starts with ripping off more of the bias trim, because that just seems to take on a life of its own when it's not attached to the jacket.  Even scarier will be cutting off the front with the messy buttonholes.  Well, I can't wear this the way it is, so I can't make matters any worse.  (May-be praying a lot while doing this will help.)  Wish me luck!