Dress embellishment

In the category of, "probably only if May rolls around and I somehow find myself with oodles and oodles of free time," here are a couple interesting ideas for embellishing the dress:

As brought up by Gertie, the hand embellishment techniques used by Alabama Chanin have the potential to be adapted for different aesthetics.

I checked out a copy of Alabama Stitch Book to flip through and I don't think I would've paid much attention if it weren't for Gertie's post. In its Alabama Chanin form, it would be a little too...homespun-y for my taste, but check out what Gertie's done for one of her dresses:

Gorgeous.

Another method that may be slightly less time-consuming (but probably not by much) is this vintage-style surface cording tutorial from Colette Patterns:

Again, gorgeous.

One of the benefits to cording versus beading is that I might be more comfortable with machine washing it. I think that's a goal I want to have, for this dress to be machine washable, so that I'll wear it often afterwards as a summer dress. Any fancy bits will either have to be detachable or part of a separate piece.