Shoddy party dress

Last year at Christmas I made the decision to make my own dress for the festivities, as a way of celebrating all that I'd learnt about sewing in the past year. I picked up Cynthia Rowley dress 2497 free with Sew magazine which I had a subscription for at the time. 

All went nice and slowly for the few weeks, and then BOOM it was the night before the Christmas party and I only had the base colour cut out, the contrast fabric hadn't been chosen and it was all going to pot!

After staying up until midnight and stitching it was finally done... the shoddiest dress I've yet made, a bright red zip, threads hanging off, not one bit of overlocking! Thankfully the fabric was just £2 p/m from a market stall in Horsham, so it didn't feel like I wasted too much money. The navy contrast was just kicking around from the stash.

Luckily for the first wearing it was dark so the threads couldn't be seen, everyone thought the ruffles couldn't possibly be done by me as a second dress, so they concluded the bright red zip must be a design element, until I confessed. Christmas day was another matter, but what's a trailing thread or 50 between family ;)

A fantastically easy pattern to make up, but once you've done it once there's little incentive to make it again, I think it could look very samey to do another. What do you think guys?