Anatomy of a Dress: Garden Party

This one arrived as a mess.  Garden Party was the first garment that really needed stain remediation.

There was a huge blotch of... mildew? something?... right on the edge of the lace panel.  I soaked the dress in Retro Clean for a day, which got rid of the worst of it, followed by a spray of OxyClean Max Force and a vigorous hand washing in the sink with dish soap.  The stain isn't 100% gone... but maybe 90%?

It looks much better now, certainly!  (Also, weep for me: my stand has broken, making these pictures trickier because Barbies were not made to balance standing.)

And the back view.  This dress fastens with two snaps, one at the top of the overlap, the other at the waist.

Inside the gown, we see that the entire bodice is lined with a single piece of netting, including the darts, which are clipped open and pressed flat.

The skirt is narrower than the others we've seen, measuring 16.5" at the hem.

The five tiers of lace are sewn onto a backing of white muslin, which is hemmed just slightly wider than 1/8".  There are two lines of stitching down either side of the panel.  The first, presumably, was to catch down the lace edges so they didn't go all cattywampus during the second set of stitches, which attached the lace panel to the dress fabric.  Please note the rest of the skirt was hemmed later, and wider: the hem is 1/2" deep, with the foldover inside about 3/8" deep.  The edges of the lace panel are hidden inside the skirt hem.

The center back skirt seam is 1/2" wide, and the foldover-and-stitch-down hemming goes to just below where the tag is sewn on and the seam opens.  As you can see by the couple loose threads, the center back seam has started coming loose, so I'm going to take a needle and some white thread right now, and mend that.