I picked this dress up from a church swap meet.  I love to refashion items I get for free because if I mess it up, there’s really no financial loss.  This was my first time working with silk, so I was a little nervous, but you have to take some risks if you want to learn!

For this refashion, I decided to not take any chances of the delicate fabric fraying, so I used seam sealant on all of my raw edges.  I then enclosed them by sewing all my seams in the French seam style, and doing double-turn hems.

I wasn’t super ecstatic about the beading, so I carefully removed it using my trusty seam ripper.  I found that the beaded areas were a little damaged by the beading.  To help prevent fraying, I covered the area with a light coating of hairspray.  I tested my hairspray on a scrap first to make sure it wouldn’t leave any marks.  I’m not sure if this will prevent further damage, but since I know it helps stop the runs in my tights, why not in a silk dress too?

I was too nervous to try and add a zipper or buttons.  In order to give it more of a fitted look, while still being able to slip it over my head, I opted to add ties at the waist.

If you have any tips on how you like to work with silk, I’d love to hear them in the comments!

For my full alterations, please see the pictorial below.

Silk Refashion Tutorial

My favorite touch was hand sewing the lace to create sleeves. This really helped to add some visual interest and gave me some more coverage.  I layered the dress over one of my half-tees in a nude color.

Also, shout out to my self-tanner for adding a whole new “before and after” element to my refashion photos.  :)