Christmas dress defying every attempt to be made

My Christmas dress project is never-ending. I was sooooo excited to start it. I had visions of a stunningly feminine gorgeous confection, and I'd been planning it for so long. I was going to use the bodice from McCall's 5094,the skirt from Butterick 8160, and the blouse from McCall's 4310. It was going to be SO CUTE.

I started with the bodice. I was on a roll, too. I accidentally almost matched the stripes from the plaid at the seams:

Then when I attached the bodice to the midriff band, this happened:

So I learned the hard way why some patterns are NOT suitable for stripes or plaids.

Oh, and before any of this happened, I discovered that my fabric, which I bought as a 7-yard remnant at a thrift store a few years ago, had been used as something else, probably a Christmas swag or something, and cut down from its original width to 33" wide. So it wasn't going to work for the Butterick skirt anyway.

I thought I'd just gather the fabric into a fabulous full skirt, and still make the 1950s blouse to wear with it, not to mention a big long sash to spiff it all up. So I cut off enough yardage to make the sash, and gathered the rest into a skirt, and when I was done, looked in the mirror and realized it made me look really fat.

I should have just given up after that, but I'm crazy, so I'm currently working on a third attempt at a Christmas dress, which I will hopefully have finished by tonight.

Meanwhile, I need a break. So I'm going to work on a special old letters post.