Contemplating A Refashion

I'm bad and haven't got any further with making my dress yet, but I have done a bit of maths so at least I have an excuse. It will happen, honest! The idea has grown in my mind of adapting the dress shape to make my own graduation blouse (Bristol seem fairly strict on the dress code - black and white). This is mostly inspired by seeing so many sets of people graduating over the past weeks, and the realisation that I only have a year left! (and that I need to get my act together...)
But yes, anyway! On Tuesday I ventured down to Broadmead to buy a towel (thrilling I know) and sadly lost my jumper somewhere along the way. This was my charity shop bargain navy lambswool men's XL Crew jumper, one of my favourites and the main thing standing between me and pneumonia in the chilly air-conditioned climes of my lab at work. Luckily all was not lost and, after failing to find it on the day, I phoned up M&S and lo they had it in their lost property. Hurrah!
So, down I went this morning to be reunited with it. On the way back I decided to stop by Primark and see if they had any cheap summer dresses which didn't require modesty-preserving but toasty vests (I seem to have overlooked this when buying almost everything in my wardrobe). I came out with not one but two bargain dresses. The first is this one which is a surprisingly very good fit (probably all that shirring on the back), a colour I don't wear enough, and cost £5. I might wear it for the boyfriend's Dad's birthday on Saturday, hopefully the weather will stay decent.
The other dress I bought, while still a bargain at £3, isn't quite the shape I'd want.

 Click through for larger pictures, I didn't want to overwhelm the blog with massive ones!

 The print is lovely, there's enough chest coverage and it's a good length but there's something potato sack-y about the top part, plus a strange overly-large frill and wormy ties:

I feel a refashion coming on.
I think the elasticated waist is probably responsible for the sack-like-ness but then it stops it bagging further down so I'm not sure what, if anything, I should do about that.
The frill is just a bit bizarre (and I never iron things so there's not much point trying to tame it that way as I'd never wear it after the first wash!) but I think it'd be too plain without. I might narrow the frill to a more manageable amount and attach the excess to the straps which are a bit thin for my liking. Alternatively I could add to/replace the straps with plain navy ribbon.
Any thoughts? Suggestions would be most welcome.
I'm not very brave about refashioning things as I always expect to screw it up.

 fluff/
My sofa has become a pile of colour and pattern (at least it's not a floordrobe?!) - clockwise from top right we have:leopard print snuggie/slanket, new M&S towel "bath sheet" - huge towels are the best, flighty but lovely navy jumper as mentioned above, Monsoon maxi skirt given me by my grandmother ages ago, grey New Look cardi - very much a staple, navy polkadot Primark skirt - £1 in the sale!, Red Herring black leggings - shorter than standard & mostly for cycling, green woolly cardi - £2.99 from a charity shop, khaki shirt from H&M last summer - lovely & light, crocheted blanket - huge grey & purple stripes, crocheted ...umm.. thing? Started life as an experiment with leftover wool, now mostly a lap blanket/antimacassar (ew)! Oh and New Look bird skirt  - originally purchased in an 18 in the sale because I loved the pattern, replacement 14 came from eBay very cheaply! (the original went to a clothes swap some friends were holding) /endfluff

Life in the lab today was punctuated by the noise of builders next door, which was pretty annoying. At lunchtime we collectively decided not to bother coming back from lunch and to work from home. After eating my sandwiches with the awesome Mr Adam  who has just recently moved to Bristol I went home and flirted with the idea of running away to the union to develop film. I have a backlog of film to develop which extends back to February; I made a list of what I have to develop, complete with dev times from the massive dev chart which seems to be a good source of that type of information.
I eventually decided to be good and productive and cycled over to Callum's to work sociably, trying and failing to pick up two lots of payment on the way (one from my summer job, the other for a psychology study I participated in yesterday). I managed to fix the problem I'd been having updating my graphs, finish off the council tax student exemption form, and start an actual list of things I need from home home. I feel efficient.
Phew. Please note that all this stuff I write here is partly for my own record, I know it's not terribly fascinating! :)