How should a repair an old silk dress?
You have a couple options, the best is probably a small patch under the hole using a small snippet of the same silk from a seam, facing or area that isn’t visible from the outside. Carefully hand sew it in place using matching thread pick up only a thread or two from the outer fabric to keep as invisible as possible. You’ll need to use tiny whip stitches to over cast the frayed edge and then carefully use a small scissors to cut away the frayed parts and don’t cut the fabric. If the silk is very fine you might need to “strip” the sewing thread: meaning you’ll need to unwind it down to one ply of thread. The other option is to use that snippet of fabric on the outside and stitch by hand over the hole and try to keep the raw edge of the patch turned to the underside. This is a very basic and simple patch If you know how to darn, place the patch under the hole and use a single ply of sewing thread and darn through the dress and the hole, being sure to use both a warp and a weft darn over
