Wow, thank you everyone for your lovely comments! I'm going to tell my other half he's been comprehensively outvoted
I feel so encouraged, I might even have a go at something with buttonholes... or a ZIP! And you are all quite right, I won't wear them together (Zoe, I do know what you mean about how to use the bag, I agree).
Pattern for the dress - I made it from an old issue of Sew Hip magazine, it is by Heather Ross - I think
this is probably broadly the same in terms of shape and you can make it longer/ shorter. Mine has a ruffle on the bottom, which was just a short tube, gathered and sewn on. The shirring is one of those things where it is very easy to understand what you should do and not very easy to actually do it, I had to wrestle with it a bit. This is how I did it:
I hand-wound the bobbin with elastic thread, then sewed a test circle around the top of the dress to check I could actually get it on and it was tight enough (although it tightens up as you sew more rows) - then I adjusted tension on the bobbin accordingly.
Then I sewed continuously all around the bodice in a stepped spiral, doing each step at the side seam. Each shirred row is about 1 cm apart. You have to stretch the fabric out as you go and by the end it is a bit of a struggle!
The problems I had were: because you sew in a spiral, the bodice ends up a bit twisted to one side (but it seems to untwist with wear & encouragement)
You run out of bobbin elastic, and if you don't secure it really well when you start/ stop the stitching unravels. I wondered if it would be better to leave one side seam unsewn, sew shirring rows, and then sew the side seam, securing the elastic, but that might be worse, I don't know.
Thanks again everyone for being so nice
But I just don't do frilly, flowery, multi coloured and patterned stuff at all, or handbags other than small plain brown or black leather (and never, ever fashion ones or expensive ones). 
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them... 
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