#53: Teal Sequined Beaded 2-piece Dress

Hello again!

Here's a new post for ya. I found this 2-piece dress that had both sequins AND beads and a thrift store this week. And how many, many beads there were...

Before: Beaded, sequined 2-piece dress

Before: From behind

I really liked the sequined design, but the humongous shoulder pads and the ridiculous amount of beading just wasn't working for me. Plus, it was too tight in the bust area.

Keep reading to see what I did with it...


I decided that I would only be working with the top this time around.

First, I removed the shoulder pads and hand-stitched the many broken stitches where sequins were falling off at the top.

Next, I very carefully and intricately removed all of the beads from the shirt. This took multiple hours over 2 days to get all the beads off.

Painstakingly removing the beads

Without all the beads, the shirt was actually very pretty.

Once I had all the beads off, I made some room in the bust by carefully cutting off all of the non-sequined and some of the sequined sleeve area.

Cutting the sleeves

The sequins on the sleeves had a similar swirl pattern on both sides which I liked, so I cut and sewed around those sequin swirls to leave some design to the sleeves.

Swirly sleeve designs

Though I had created some room in the bust, the arm hole now gaped open at the bottom to show my bra. Since I'm not the bra-showing kind of lady, I used some of the beaded edge material I had cut off of the bottom of the original sleeves and pinned and sewed them directly to the bottom of the arm holes. This gave a double-layered effect that seemed to match with the rest of the textured top, and it did its job of concealing my bra through the arm holes.

Pinning a little extra material to the arm holes

Once that was completed, I was done with the shirt. But what to do with all those beads and those humongous shoulder pads?

Let's start with the shoulder pads first. The other day I was browsing through a gift shop and saw those small cases that are like wallets with wrist straps. I thought how convenient that could be if I ever went somewhere I did not want to take my purse, but the ones in the gift shop were rather expensive. I found these shoulder pads to be perfect DIY materials to create my own! They were a nice color which coordinated with the top, and they had hanger loops attached which I thought could be handy as the wrist straps.

My first step in this DIY wrist wallet/purse was to choose the sides I wanted to face outward, lay those sides facing each other, and sew the straight side shut.

Sewing the long sides together

Next, I carefully took a zipper I salvaged from another project and sewed the sipper onto both sides of the rounded edges (make sure the straps are on the inside).

Sewing on a zipper

Once the zipper was sewn on and the bottom corners sewn shut, I flipped it right side in.

Preparing to flip!

Flipped right side in, the wrist wallet was almost done.

Almost done!

I tried decorating it a few ways, but I settled on a matching necklace bust charm I had bought at the dollar store for the chain, but never used the charm. I sewed it onto the front of the wallet.

Stitching on the charm

From shoulder pads to wrist wallet, here's the result!

After: Shoulder Pads Wrist Wallet

Next, onto all those beads...

I strung together lots of beads on a double-threaded needle. This took a long time, and I barely made a dent in the amount of beads I removed by the time the string of beads was a few yards long.

Stringing the beads

Once I had enough of that, I took some silver thread my friend A.S. sent me a while back, and wound about 5 inches of that thread around 2 pins in my couch 5 times (did this twice).

Stringing the silver thread

At one end, I attached the loop and clasp of an old broken necklace At the other end I attached a loop that typically serves as a hook and loop fastener to keep garments closed.

Necklace clasp

Then I strung the long string of beads over a few times into the loops on both sides and had a new necklace!

Here's what a fraction of my beads went to:

After: New Teal Beaded Necklace

And now, for the dress itself:

Here again is how it looked before:

Before: Teal Beaded Sequined 2-piece Dress

Before: From behind

And here's the after look:

After: Professional and fancy

After: Teal sequined blouse

After: from behind

Shoulder design

I liked this one. It's still pretty exclamatory, but I think it looks a bit more modern this way.

I hope you found some inspiration in the shirt, necklace, and/or wrist wallet! But I still need some help figuring out what to do with the skirt part of this dress. It has an elastic waistband and lots of beads. Any ideas, please leave them in the comments section below!

Thanks for visiting!

Until next time, blessings.