Handsewing to the rescue

Thank you all for the encouraging, and sympathetic words to my last post.  I really did try everything.  Toteworthy gave me nearly step-by-step instructions to put the zipperhead back on the zipper (!!) but I noticed (thanks Blooms) that indeed, some of the zipper teeth were mangled from my wrestling with the zipper.  Despite my reservations, taking out the zipper did not take that long.  I was dreading picking out my handpicked lining and then the machine stitches for the fashion fabric, but it took less than a round of Olympic beach volleyball to get through it.  A few of you kindly suggested handsewing the zipper in, and I did... to a point.  I basted it (I couldn't get the waist and collar seams to align otherwise) and then stitched it in.  A million handsewn stitches for the lining later... and I'm done.

Good old fashioned handsewing saved the day.

Which brings me to say something I thought I would never say before: thank goodness for handsewing.  Tedious as it may be, it still beats pinning it for precision and speed, and sometimes you just can't manipulate the fabric around the needle to get things to work the way you want.

On another note, Margi posted a comment to my muslin post with a request that I share my methods for regrading a pattern.  I figured that I am not the only one who regrades patterns, and I am right.  I did a little internet searching (I am too lazy to create a tutorial of my own) and found a great tutorial by the (not so) Selfish Seamstress on Burdastyle.  Here is a link - Make a pattern larger or smaller - enjoy!

Please rescue me.

Can you see what's wrong with my almost finished dress?  It's not that it needs to be hemmed (it does.)  There's a reason I'm not wearing it for this photo. 

The zipper is broken, and I am ready to throw this out the window.  This dress has taken forever to make, and tonight I finally hand picked the lining in, eagerly tried it on, and then... tried to take it off.  That's when I realized that the zipper teeth had gotten misaligned right at the top of the peplum, and I couldn't get this sucker off.  I couldn't pull it down over my hips, or up over my shoulders.  I ended up cutting off the zipper stops at the top of the zipper, pulling the zipper head off, and now I have this:

That black speck on the floor?  The zipper head.  How to get it back onto the dress?

I have decided that I would rather start all over again than take the zipper out and install a new one (and yes, I know that makes no sense at all, as reinstalling the zipper will take much less time than starting all over again.)  Is that the only answer?  Does anyone know how to fix a broken invisible zipper?