Birthday Dress Drama

Somebody talk me down!  I'm on the ledge, ready to cut with scissors.  It all started with a trip to ravelry.com; doesn't it always start that way!  The best laid plans of mice and knitters, I suppose. 

As I said, I had gone to Ravelry looking for inspiration.  My daughter's first birthday is coming up in July and I really wanted to make her the perfect dress to mark the occasion.  I found my muse in the Child's Glamour Dress.  With the word "glamour" in the title, I just knew it was the one.  If you're not familiar with this pattern, it knits from the bottom up in two pieces, but as I am currently worshipping at the alter of Elizabeth Zimmermann,  I am too good for the flat knitting of the plebes, I ONLY knit on circulars.  So, off I went. 

The skirt portion is intended to be knit entirely in feather and fan pattern which is quite adorable, but wasn't giving me the look I was going for with my Knit Picks Felici self striping yarn.  So, I decided to just have the feather and fan as a decorative edge and knit the rest of the skirt in stockinette.  Once I finished the skirt, I was feeling pretty smug.  I was convinced I was a master knitter now.  After all, I'd watched ALL of EZ's Knitting Workshop cds.  Here is what the skirt looked like:

Now comes the bodice. Being that I've never knitted a bodice before, I was not confident in how to translate the pattern into circular.  (EZ gold badge getting a little rusty at this point).  So, I knit the front half rather nicely and ditto for the back.  I really liked how the yarn gave thicker stripes for the top.  My ego was slowly returning.

Now, the time had come to knit together the selvages of the bodice.  To my obsessive / compulsive horror, the front stripes and back stripes did not match up exactly!  Argh!  I decided to chill at this point and told myself that it would add to the charm of the "glamour" dress.  Ok, so now all I had to do was seam up the selvages of the bodice.  Herein lies my nightmare.  Those selvages ripped off my golden Master Knitter badge and stomped all over my knitted heart.  Every time I seamed them up, they ended up with holes next to the seams.  Check it out:

Now, rather than knitting happily into the sunset, I must spend the next . . . however long. . . figuring out how to fix this problem.  What do you think?  Kitchner?  That's the direction I'm headed in now.  Help me fellow knitters. . . you're my only hope.