CAB Dress - #3 (Or, Why Chiffon Is A Pain)

I got about 2 hours of skirt sewing in today and I'm still not ready to attach it to the bodice. Why? Because chiffon is a pain in the ass, plain and simple. Sure, it's lovely and flowing, and one might even say ethereal. But for all that grace it takes a lot of swearing and pinning, and adjusting, and repeat. Oh, and it requires french seams, which means double the work. Argh. After multiple attempts at pinning, here's what I ended up with when attaching the front skirt panel to the back:

See how the bottom piece (the back) is longer than the top, by a good 2.5 inches? (Thank you blue lines of truth). I have no idea what happened here but the good news is it was the same way on the other side. This dress has a slight train that I was thinking of nixing anyway so it seems to me I now have the perfect reason to do so.

So, there are definite signs of progress albeit little ones. To keep the pipeline full though I'm already starting to think about the next project. I saw this at JCrew today and thought it might be the next thing. Notice the similarities:

It's tough to see in this McCall's pattern picture but I think with some minor tweaks we could have a good knockoff. And, the weather here is supposed to reach *gasp* 50 degrees tomorrow, with sun, so I'm itching for a spring project.