Work In Progress: Gray Ruffle Dress

So this is what I worked on this weekend. I'm not *thrilled* with it, and so I figured I'd put it up for your comments.

What's wrong:

-- the skirt was originally about 3" longer, which was WAY TOO LONG, Texas-compound long, but I'd already sewn on the ruffle, which meant I had to take it up from the waist. Which meant resewing the seams on either side of the center front and back piece (had already put in the pockets, too, so I didn't want to resew those seams).

-- I wanted to match the darts with the center front seams so I had to ease the front into the skirt and so it wrinkled. I think if I stay it with some twill tape it will stay stretched, but I haven't done that yet.

-- I thought I was ready for an elegant gray dress, monochrome and understated and all that, but now that I have one I think it needs some color. Where? I could sew middy braid around the neck and hem ... or, you know, I could just wear a yellow cardigan over it (which is what I'll probably end up doing anyway).

The weirdness on the right-hand side of the picture (left-hand side of the dress) is from pinning it -- I haven't put in the zipper yet. Nor have I sewn down the sleeve self-facings.

This dress came about because I (shock, horror!) managed to LOSE the pieces for this pattern:



I don't know where they went; all I know is that I can't find them. Arrgh.

So I took a six-gore skirt from a pattern I had NOT lost the pieces from (McCalls 3036, which I don't have a link to right now), did some rudimentary math and some pattern-piece surgery, and put together the skirt. Then I just slapped on the bodice from McCalls 8858 again.

Here's a few more pics:





Anyway, am I not thrilled about this dress because it's inherently not a thriller, or am I not thrilled about this dress because I had to do too much fussing with it? (Actually, the more I look at it the more fun I think it will be to wear, if I try not to overthink it too much. And if I finally wear a solid-colored dress, perhaps I could finally wear some of the colorful jewelry I've collected ...)

Thoughts?