Black and white t-shirt dress and some sewing tips

Available at my shop
Look! The color of my tights are matching with the flower in the back yard:p
I made this dress last night after watching prison brake.. I am so into this show now. I am at the season two now. Wentworth Miller is too cute.

Anyways, I can think of so many different variation of this dress. For instance, I am thinking of making it in light gray & pale pink combination, or dark red & dark gray combination..
Also, if I get too lazy, I can use already-made t-shirt for the upper part.

This is embarrassingly unprofessional, but this pic above is the pattern I drafted last night. I use flyers which comes with news papers in the morning:p I usually use two big ones, and tape them together. Then using the measurements, I quickly draft patterns, and change here and there as I go along.

I have never been trained as a professional seamstress or anything. I learned everything from BurdaStyle, other online sources and books I take out from libraries. So I am not in a position to advise anyone about sewing, but here are some tips I learned over time to make your sewing time a bit smoother and faster:
* Don't pin patterns to fabric. I use paper weights (actually just heavy coasters I got for my wedding) to hold the patterns, and cut it out. This saves a lot of time.
* Don't baste. I personally think this is a waste of time, unless you are making a wedding dress or something big. I use some pins, but sometimes skip that entirely as well.
* Serge first, then connect the parts together - I used to serge as I went, but I found out, taking care of the edges of the fabric first saves a lot of time at the end.

Hope this helps!