Project Easter Skirt - Fail

As the title says I tried to make myself an Easter skirt and failed miserably.  I found the cutest skirt here.  The Tutorial was pretty straight forward and it looked really easy to make.  I followed her guidelines on making the skirt a different size (Sadly I'm a little bit bigger then she is -- height and waist).  Not sure how I messed up but after I got 2 of the ruffles on I realized that I had cut my skirt in on the width and not the length.  So my skirt is now short and big around instead of the other way around. 

Basically I just wasted $19.00 in material.  Grrr!  It's not salvageable because not all the measurements are off. 

Also I am having a huge issue with my sewing machine sewing ZigZag Stiches.  You can see from this picture what it's doing.  To get around this I just used a straight stitch when I sewed the ruffle to the skirt. 

The most frustating part of it all is I thought it was going to be easy to work on so I started this first instead of working on the boys ties and now it's the day before Easter and I don't have an Easter skirt and the boys don't have Easter ties.

I'm frustrated with myself and lack of sewing ability. I keep thinking it's a learned process but I honest think some people are just born with the ability to creat thing with a sewing machine (like my mom) and I just don't.