Lost New Year's Dress

Around October or November (last) I received my much-anticipated Newport News Holiday catalog.  I love just about everything that they make and if I was very wealthy I'd simply call them and order one of everything in black and wait for the delivery truck.  Since that's not an option, I decided to make this neat dress, which I loved so hard (ripped out of the catalog and wrinkled to death) that I couldn't even scan it, so here is the dress from the site:

I thought about this dress a whole lot.  It's hard to see the jewels and crystals on the yoke, but they are delightful!  Then I decided, (about a week before Christmas) hey!  why not make this dress for Christmas Eve dinner and service!  And that didn't happen for about nine-hundred very good reasons.
And then New Year's Eve also came and went, and by gum, I'm going to have me this dress regardless of holiday or no holiday.   I found the near-exact crystals at Michael's and I found this McCall's pattern:

Similar, but not identical, so out came the scissors, tape and paper.  (Yeah, I want this dress that bad.  I also love a good challenge.)

'So, what's so Edwardian about this dress?' you might ask: Hand applied beading and working with silk.  While I cut the bulk of this from a gorgeous black rayon from my stash, I did end up buying 1 yard of black silk dupioni on sale.

'Wait!,'  you say.  You bought something?!  What household bill did you pay?!  I paid on my dental bill and negotiated a more do-able payment arrangement.  Black silk is worth all that.  Yes.