Swan Dress-in-Progress

So, being the crafty little obsessive-compulsive that I am, I decided to spend one of my off days (today) beginning to work on the Infamous Bjork Swan Dress. (I spent the other nursing a hangover and feeling guilty...but that's another story.)
Anyway--a picture of the materials:

10 yards of white tulle, 4 yards of pale lining material, 2 yards of white jersey, 1 yard of unknown white fabric.
A picture of the work area:



Prowling Craftster I gathered (haha) that the best way to gather tulle was to sew through the layers with long stitches and then pull to gather, pin to your base material, and stitch onto it. You can see the results of that technique on the top of this picture. It did the trick, sort of, but took a long time. The bottom of that picture was done simply holding two layers of tulle against the lining material and hand-making ruffles as I sewed along. Much quicker and rufflier.
Of course, the sewing machine I'm using is a Singer that's about twice as old as I am, and whose bottom bobbin feed is ALL OUT OF WHACK. So I had a lot of issues with pulling and scrunching which, of course, would be much more of a problem if I wasn't going for that sort of thing to begin with.
And half the day's work:

I made about 1/3rd the ruffle-strips that I'll need for the skirt (I think...) and started on the swan's neck (not pictured) before giving up on the sewing machine and throwing in the towel.
I'm insane.