Snow White costume

Yep, I'm still here.

I know I haven't posted in over a month. I've spent the last month 1) moving houses and 2) sewing Littles' Halloween costume. I think the first was more time consuming, but it's really a close call :)

Anyway, we're in the new house now, and good news! I now have a dedicated space for sewing :) (In the old house, my sewing area was in our guest room -- and we have guests frequently, so I had to take a sewing break or move my sewing stuff elsewhere on a regular basis. Not to mention the fact that guests had to find someplace to squeeze there stuff amidst all my fabric.) Bad news, I haven't had any time to set it up yet, so I'm still not sewing again. One of these days.

As for the Halloween costume, that did get finished, in time for the big day.

For those of you who aren't intimately familiar with the Disney Princesses (lucky!), this is Snow White. The pattern is Simplicity 2817, which is the official licensed one. I made a size 5 for Littles, who normally wears a 4T, and it fits fine with some room to grow.

The fabric is all Symphony broadcloth from Joann's. This is the cheapest kind of broadcloth that Joann's carries, and if I were to do this again, I think I'd use the next "step up." The Symphony stuff really does feel kinda thin and cheap. Because it is, I guess :)

Despite using the cheapie broadcloth, all the fabric cost about $20, which is about as much as a ready-to-wear Snow White dress! But this does include some nice extras, like the cape. (Which Littles has started wearing independently of the Snow White dress -- for example, she'll put it over her Silvermist costume and call herself "Super Silvermist!") Besides, those stupid store-bought dresses always start falling apart within days. Even with the cheapie broadcloth, this one is holding up much better.

Good thing, because as I implied earlier, I'm not 100% sure which was more time consuming, moving houses or sewing this costume :) That's a bit of an exaggeration, but really, this did take a while to sew. It wasn't particularly hard, there are just a lot of pieces to cut out and put together. Still, I think the end result was worth it.

I followed the pattern pretty closely, except:

• I used my serger on most seams, rather than my sewing machine. The pattern has a 5/8" seam allowance, so before sewing a seam, I'd draw a line 3/8" from the edge, and serge on that line. The serger adds another 1/4" seam allowance, so that's just right.
  There were only a few non-straight-line raw seams, mostly around the armholes. For those, I had to sew a basting line anyway to do the gathers, so I sewed the basting line at 3/8" in and then tried to serge along the basting line.
• I skipped the collar. I worked on it one night and couldn't figure it out, and I had way too much other stuff going on in my life to spend a ton of time messing with it.
• I used snaps, rather than velcro, to secure the cape to the dress (less likely to shift/come apart), and velcro, rather than a zipper, on the back opening (easier to get on/off independently).
• I goofed initially, and sewed the skirt onto the bodice the wrong way! So the seam was on the outside of the dress. Oops. I had to cut it off and re-serge it. In the process, I think the bodice lost a little of its "definition" -- if you look at a picture of Snow White, the bodice dips down further/more sharply at the front waistline. Also, at certain angles, the piping doesn't seem to match up quite right with the dip in the bodice. I might try to fix it up a bit, but it does look OK as-is, for the most part.

Here are a few more shots...

The headband has been a big hit as well. I don't love it -- I put glue all along the top of the headband to secure the fabric, and you can see the glue line even now that it's dried. I should have just put glue on the bottom of the headband. But anyway, I guess the important thing is that Littles loves it so much that she wants to wear it to school practically every day. And I have a few more of these headbands (I could only find a 3-pack of suitably sized headbands) and plenty more fabric to use to cover them, and these are super easy to make!

Another shot of the cape...

With Noob... I wanted to make him a Dopey costume to match, but simply ran out of time. And this might be the last year I could coerce him into wearing a costume to match his big sister's. Oh well.

So that's that! I'll see you again once my sewing room is set up :)

Rainbow dress

I got the "tie dye" fabric that I used for the bottom part of this dress a few months ago, to top off a Fabric.com order so that I could get free shipping. I didn't even really know what I would use it for, but, well, it was cheap. And Fabric.com accidentally sent me two yards instead of one, and when I pointed this out to them, they said that I could keep the extra yard. (I highly recommend Fabric.com. Their customer service is excellent!) So, I have a lot of it...

Littles has been begging me to make a dress for her out of it since the moment she first saw it. She found it once again in my pile of fabric over the weekend, and begged me again. This time, with my experience making her tutu shirt fresh in my mind, I decided to tackle the project.

Believe it or not, the top part of the dress is one of my shirts. Ummm, no, it's not from my childhood... it's from my single-woman days :) In my defense, I did have to modify it so that it would fit Littles. I wasn't wearing a shirt small enough to fit a 4-year-old :) But yeah, it's a little too tight/skimpy for my current tastes, so it's been sitting in the back of my closet for years. Just waiting to be given a new life!

Here is what it looked like originally:

I altered it by 1) cutting off the spaghetti straps and serging the ends together, 2) making the body of the shirt narrower by re-serging both sides, and 3) cutting a few inches off the bottom.

Then I cut the "tie dye" fabric to the appropriate length. It's not really tie dyed; it's a printed 100% polyester knit. Anyway, the tutorials I found suggested making the fabric about 2.5 to 3 times as wide as the shirt you're attaching it to. The fabric was 60" wide, so that was just about perfect for this shirt, which was about 22" at the waist after my modifications.

I serged the top of the fabric using a 2x differential on my serger, which gathered it slightly, and then I was able to pull the threads to gather it even more. I like this method of gathering much more than doing a basting stitch on my sewing machine. It's a little harder to gather, but it feels more secure. It's also at the very top of the fabric (since the serger cuts off any excess) so it's easier to hide with the seam attaching the top of the fabric to the waist of the shirt.

Once I had the fabric gathered, I serged the two ends together to form a "tube." Then I serged the gathered edge of the tube onto the bottom of the shirt. I used my experience with the tutu shirt to sew this one on right! Shirt right side out, skirt "tube" inside out, right sides together.

Finally, I finished the hem with a rolled-edge stitch on my serger. This made for a nice, lightweight hem that allows the dress to "splat out" (as Littles calls it) when she twirls. An important feature for any dress!

So, this was my first major project completed entirely using my new serger! It could definitely be done on a regular sewing machine, especially with knit fabric like I used, since it doesn't fray, so finishing the seams is less important. But serging gave me a nice professional finish on all the seams. I'm still getting used to my serger and definitely spent some time cussing at it during the completion of this dress :) But I really love the results!

And so does Littles:

Tutu pajamas

In my diaper-sewing posts, I've mentioned a couple of times that I've also been working on non-diaper projects. This was one of them:

I finished this back in May, I think. It's a pair of pajama shorts for Littles. Pattern is Simplicity It's So Easy 2738. As I've done on similar projects, I did french seams on the legs and crotch to prevent raw edges. (This was pre-serger; I'm sure I'll end up making stuff like this again, and when I do, I'll use the serger to sew and finish the edges all at once!)

The flannel is from Joann's. It's the same stuff I used to make the pillow for Littles' nap mat.

I thought Littles would love them because of the ballerinas, but alas, like just about everything I sew for her, she had no interest in wearing them. To be fair, she refuses to wear shorts in general, not just the ones I make. But a month or so after sewing these shorts, I came across this tutorial for a "tutu t-shirt." Since Littles loves tutus, I thought it might be the perfect top to revive her interest in these shorts.

The end result:

I made one semi-major goof while sewing this. When it came time to sew the tulle onto the bottom of the shirt, I lost my mind for a minute and thought that you sew fabric with wrong sides together. So I turned the shirt inside out to sew the tutu on. Of course, that's not correct; you usually sew with right sides together. Oops! The result is that the hem of the shirt turns up slightly, and also, the basting seam I used to gather the tulle is slightly visible. Here's a close-up:

Of course, the seam looks much better from the inside (i.e. what was supposed to be the right side). Here, the seam you see above the tulle is just the original hem seam from the t-shirt, so that wouldn't be visible had I sewn it the right way. See how much smoother the seam looks in this picture?

I could have ripped out the seam and sewn it again, but that would've taken quite a bit of time -- and, well, these are pajamas, so who cares if the seam is less than perfect? I'll wait and see if Littles actually wears this before investing that kind of time into fixing it :)

The complete set:

Littles was super excited about the shirt, but not so excited about the shorts. Still, she humored me:

Ugh, that turned-up seam is driving me a little bit nuts, but I'm trying to quell my inner perfectionist.

Purple tutu

Ages ago, I got a bunch of pink and purple tulle to make tutus for Littles. I sewed a pink tutu way back in December, and it was enough of a pain that I wasn't exactly jumping to sew the purple one. But Littles found the purple tulle in my sewing room one day, and has been begging me to make her a purple tutu. And I can't turn down my little girl :)

I didn't love the way that the pink tutu turned out, so for this one, I used these instructions from fabric.com. The one slight modification I made was that rather than sewing the layers of tulle to a piece of scrap ribbon one at a time, I sewed them all together, using a basting stitch (long thread length/loose tension), and then gathered them together.

I also had Littles "help" me with this project, which she absolutely loved. Just simple stuff like holding the tulle while I cut it.

The end result is... better. But still not great. Since I suspect I'll be making a tutu again (Littles loves to dance), here are the modifications I would make:

1. Don't wait for your overeager preschooler to find the neatly folded tulle in your sewing room. She will unfold it all, making it much harder to cut later! The Joann's cutting counter gave me the tulle folded in half, so all I would have had to do is cut along the foldline... had Littles not gotten to it first :)
2. Possibly use just 3 layers of tulle for a child's tutu, rather than 4. It's pretty poofy.
3. You typically don't backstitch when doing a basting seam, but it's very helpful to backstitch one side of the basting seam holding the layers together. Then you can gather from the other side, without worrying about the gathered fabric slipping off the end.
4. Don't cut the waistband ribbon to length. Leave a lot of extra. You can cut it down to the right length when you fold it over. (With this one, I did cut it to length plus a little extra, and it ended up being way too short so I had to fold over part of the tutu itself. It looks a little funny.)
5. When sewing the waistband ribbon to the tulle, sew with the tulle up, the ribbon down. I didn't do this, and accidentally caught lower pieces of the tulle in my stitching a couple of times because I couldn't see it.

That said, I do like this method a lot. And Littles loves the results, which is all that really matters!

Two simple dresses (that Littles refuses to wear :)

I know I've been somewhat diaper-obsessed as of late, but I've managed to squeeze in a few non-diaper-related projects as well.

I made two simple dresses for Littles:

 

The one on the left is made from pre-shirred fabric from Joann's. It's ridiculously easy to make a dress out of this stuff -- just cut and hem it to the right length, add some straps (I made straps out of the bottom of the fabric, but you could just use ribbons if you wanted), and go!

The downside is that it's normally super expensive -- about 50 cents an inch, I think. But it was on sale for 50% off and then Littles found this particular piece in the remnants bin, so it was another 50% off, bringing it down to under $4 for the piece. And it is really beautiful!

Unfortunately, the remnant was just a tad bit smaller than what I would have cut had I been choosing the length, so it's fairly tight around Littles' torso. Probably because of that, she hasn't wanted to wear it a whole lot, but I did get a few action shots of her wearing it:

 

The dress on the right above is a standard pillowcase dress. I can't even remember what blog I got the directions off of, but if you search around for "pillowcase dress tutorials," you'll find lots of options! Good thing this one was cheap (I made it out of an old pillowcase that we had around the house) because Littles refuses to wear it! Oh well.

Hmmm, maybe I should stick with diapers :)

Lacrosse girls

 

I help coach a high school girls lacrosse team. The other coach, "L," has two kids of her own and a third on the way (yes, yet another pregnant friend!). We both bring our kids to practices and games fairly regularly, so my kids and I know L's kids pretty well.

About a year ago, I was browsing around at Joann's when I saw a really cute "Lacrosse Girl" flannel print. It immediately made me think of Littles and of L's daughter, "J." (Note: For some reason, my pictures of this print show up super hot pink on my monitor. If they show up that way on yours, trust me, the fabric wasn't that bright in person.)

At the time, I didn't really know what I could do with flannel, but I still bought 3 yards of it, figuring I could find something! Now I'm wishing I bought a lot more, as I have tons of project ideas that could use flannel. Sadly, the fabric was on the Red Tag (clearance) shelf when I bought it, so I doubt it's ever coming back...

But I did make a little drawstring backpack for Littles a few months ago. I use it to keep coloring books, dolls, and other little things for her to amuse herself with when she's on the sidelines at lacrosse games. And with J's birthday approaching, I pulled the fabric out again to see what else I could do with it.

I decided to make her some pajamas. I didn't have quite enough fabric to make pajama pants, but with spring right around the corner, I figured that short-sleeve pajamas were perfectly appropriate.

The pattern is a kids pajamas pattern that I bought ages ago. It's Simplicity It's So Easy 2738.

I had to totally guess on J's size. She is turning 6, so I went ahead and made a size 7. I figure that baggy pajamas are OK, and besides, for kids stuff, they can always grow in to something that is too big, but they can't shrink to fit into something too small! Also, sizes 3-6 were on one part of the pattern paper and sizes 7-12 were on another, so by making a size 7 for J, I'm able to use the same pattern envelope to make stuff for Littles in a smaller size :)

A couple of modifications I made:

• I did french seams to prevent the flannel from fraying along the raw edges.
  How I did it: The pattern called for a 5/8" seam allowance. For each seam, I put the fabric with right sides facing out, rather than wrong sides, like you usually do when sewing. I sewed with a 1/4" seam allowance. Then I turned the fabric inside out, so now I had wrong sides together, as usual. I sewed with a 3/8" seam allowance, enclosing the previous seam allowance (and its raw edges) inside. The result was a 5/8" seam (only 3/8" visible) with no raw edges.
• I did a drawstring waist instead of elastic, since I don't know how big J's waist is and I didn't want them falling off her.
  How I did it: For the drawstring, I cut a long strip about 1.5 inches wide. I folded it in half and ironed it down, then turned in a little bit (about 1/4") on the raw edges and ironed those down as well. I did a straight stitch seam to sew the two sides together. I left the edges unfinished until later.
• The drawstring waist meant that I needed holes on the casing at the waist where I wanted the drawstring to come out.
  How I did it: Just before sewing down the casing at the waist, I marked where I wanted the holes. Since flannel frays easily, I didn't want to leave the holes unfinished, so I did buttonholes, using the automatic buttonhole feature of my sewing machine (a Kenmore). It took me a few tries practicing on scrap flannel, but once I got the hang of it, it was easy, and the holes turned out nicely! Once the holes were sewn, I sewed down the casing all the way around (following the original directions), then used a safety pin to thread the drawstring through the holes and around the casing.
  Here's a close-up of the finished drawstring and holes:
  
• The pattern includes a matching top, but I didn't have enough fabric for that, so I decided to just embellish a plain t-shirt instead. I really wanted a white t-shirt, but I couldn't find one in J's size in time, so I grabbed a hot pink one instead. It actually worked nicely with the flannel's colors.
  How I did it: I cut out a piece of the flannel and pressed the edges under, then sewed around. This left neatly finished edges that won't fray.
  
  Hubby asked if it was upside down. Haha. No! The lacrosse sticks are right side up, and there is a smaller "Lacrosse Girl" at the top that is also right side up.

With J's birthday present finished, I decided to work on a gift for the new baby, who is due in July. L just found out that it's a girl! So she clearly needs matching Lacrosse Girl gear!

The pants are from Simplicity 2291. I wasn't thrilled with the way they turned out. They are huge! I was debating over whether to make small (3-6 month size) or medium (6-12 month size), given that we do live in Texas, so the new baby may not need pants until she's past 6 months old :) I decided to make the small size, but they turned out to be closer to 6-12 month size anyway! Here they are on a real live 1-year-old :) Noob is solidly in 12 month size pants, and these fit him pretty well:

Aside from being larger than I expected, the pattern did work well for pajama pants, but I wouldn't use them to make actual pants (which is what the pattern was really intended for). They're too baggy.

The one modification I made to the pattern was to do french seams, as I did on J's shorts. I didn't like that J's shorts ended up with a somewhat bulky 3/8" seam allowance that couldn't be trimmed, so on these pants, I first sewed with a 3/8" seam allowance, then trimmed it down, then turned the fabric and sewed with a 1/4" seam allowance. This still gave me the required 5/8" seam allowance, but the seams weren't as bulky.

I paired the pants with an embellished onesie. One of our nearby Babies R Us stores is moving locations, so they put the whole store on sale for the last few weeks to clear out their inventory before the move. I bought a bunch of plain white onesies in a variety of sizes at 50-75% off, so I can do embellished onesies for all of my pregnant friends and any more who turn up in the future :)

As on J's shirt, I embellished using a scrap from the flannel. I used a much smaller scrap for the onesie, since it's much smaller than J's shirt :) I also accidentally cut the scrap without a whole lot extra around the edges, so rather than folding under the raw edges, as I did on J's shirt, I secured the scrap to the shirt using Heat n Bond Lite, then used a satin stitch all around the edges. This should do a good job of preventing fraying.

I'm pretty proud of these two sets! I think they turned out really well, and they weren't at all hard to put together (just a little more than one night of work).

Vidia slippers

Littles somehow managed to lose one (only one!) of the Silvermist slippers I made for her a few months ago. I know it's somewhere in the house. But it's freezing here right now and she's been off school for the last three days due to snow/ice and I'm tired of seeing her poor bare feet around the house. So I decided to sew her a new pair.

This time, I asked Littles what color she wanted, and she chose purple. In the Disney Fairies world, purple is Vidia's color:

Vidia isn't one of the nicer fairies, but Littles loves her because she loves purple. I bought purple crushed panne months ago to make a Vidia costume for Littles (to go with her Tinker Bell and Silvermist costumes), but I haven't gotten around to it. Since she requested purple slippers, I figured I'd make them to match the Vidia costume that I will sew eventually :)

I used the same technique as the Silvermist slippers: Sew Darling Mini Mocs pattern, crushed panne for the outer, fleece for the inner, and anti-slip fabric for the sole.

Hopefully we can keep track of these ones :)

The tutu fix

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a tutu that I made for Littles' dance class, and mentioned that the waist was a little too big. Well, I fixed it! I simply added some snaps on the waistband. This makes the tutu much more adjustable, and more secure, too:

It's hard to see in this picture, but I placed the snaps right above the seamline going through the middle of the ribbon. They only go through the ribbon, not through the tulle, so they are hidden by the gathered tulle above the seamline and aren't very visible when the tutu is on.

This also addressed the problem with the old ribbon waistband where it was hard to tie it tight enough to prevent a gaping hole where the two edges of the tutu didn't quite come together. With the snaps, the two edges naturally overlap, creating a nice smooth look:

Littles approves of the fix :)

I love those snap pliers! They come in handy for so many projects.

Silvermist slippers

After receiving her Silvermist costume for Christmas, Littles wore it for three days straight. On Day 2, she developed a nasty cold, and I felt so bad for her walking around the chilly house in bare arms/legs/feet (because, of course, she refused to wear anything but the costume) that I decided to at least do something about the feet.

So I pulled out the Sew Darling Mini Mocs pattern. I've sewed this pattern up a few times before and I love it! If you're familiar with Robeez soft soled shoes, Mini Mocs come out looking very similar. They are super easy to sew and the pattern is free!

The pattern includes sizes 0-6 months all the way through 4 years. For Littles, I used the 4 years pattern, but since she has her daddy's wide feet, I cut it a little bit wider. For fabric. I used scraps of crushed panne from her Silvermist costume top for the outside toe and outside heel pieces. I used anti slip sole fabric (found on the notions wall at Joann's) for the outside sole. And for all of the inside pieces, I used light blue fleece, to make the slippers soft and warm.

I think they came out really nicely!

A good shot of the anti slip sole fabric:

I managed to get her to wear a long sleeve shirt as well as the slippers, but she still refused to put anything on her legs...Oh well.

Silvermist fairy costume

If you don't have a preschool-age girl in your life, you are probably unfamiliar with Silvermist. But everyone probably knows her good friend Tinker Bell, of Peter Pan fame. The marketing wizards at Disney apparently figured out that they could make Tinker Bell a star in her own right, and sell more stuff. So there are now movies that feature Tinker Bell. She has an entourage of fairy friends, each possessing a different talent. Silvermist is a "water fairy."

Like many other preschool-age girls, Littles adores Tinker Bell. In fact, when we went to the pumpkin patch with her preschool class back in October, out of maybe 10 girls in our group, three of them planned to be Tinker Bell for Halloween. Littles was one of them, and she insisted that I sew her costume.

I used Butterick 4632 as the pattern. It's not as pretty as the official licensed Disney fairy pattern (Simplicity 2559 for sizes 1/2 to 4, or Simplicity 2872 for sizes 3-8), but it is very easy to sew. I didn't make the included wings; instead, I picked up green wings at Dollar Tree. Here is the finished costume:

Littles loves her Tinker Bell costume, but she also requested a Silvermist costume and a Vidia costume. (Vidia is actually a bit of a villain in the Tinker Bell movies, but Littles likes her because she wears purple, which is Littles' favorite color.) So I decided to sew them for her as a Christmas present. Noob's gift ended up taking so long that I could only do one, and I chose to do Silvermist. Thankfully, this one came together much faster. It took less than 2 hours of sewing time.

I made the original Tinker Bell costume out of some relatively expensive "special occasion" fabric (for the top) and stretch satin (for the skirt) from Joann's. I figured out afterwards that I could use crushed panne instead, which I picked up on sale for $2.99/yard at Hancock Fabrics. Score! And it worked really well!

Here is Littles wading through her other presents in her new Silvermist costume on Christmas morning:

I like how it turned out, for the most part. I messed up the elastic casing on the skirt, but the top covers it anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Also, the neck hole is too big for Littles, so the costume tends to slide off one of her shoulders. I had this problem with the original Tinker Bell costume and I thought it was because I had sewed the neckline incorrectly... but I did it right this time and it's still a problem. I think the size small (which is what I made) might just be a little big for her. Oh well, a safety pin in the back of the top holds it on her shoulders for now, and it gives her room to grow.

Littles could care less about the big neck hole, and has now worn this costume for three days straight :) But she has asked for blue wings. Darn, Dollar Tree only sells fairy wings around Halloween. I might have to learn how to make them myself...

Tutu

Littles has been taking dance classes once a week for the past year. She loves them! She does ballet and just started tap last month. When Hubby took her to the dance store to get tap shoes, she spied some tutus... and has been asking for one ever since. So I decided to sew one up for her as an early Christmas present.

I had found some tutu sewing directions at Joann's a while back -- they have little sheets in the store with interesting project suggestions on them. I used that as a starting point, but ended up modifying it slightly to suit my preferences. I should have taken pictures as I went to do this post tutorial-style, but, well, I didn't. So I'll try to describe in words instead.

I used shiny tulle from Joann's in two different shades of pink. I cut strips lengthwise, from selvage to selvage, that were 12", 14", 20", and 24". (The original directions called for another strip 28" wide, but I thought that might make it a little long for Littles.) So, with the two different colors, I ended up with eight pieces of tulle.

I folded them in half, so now I had pieces that were 6", 7", 10", and 12" in height. Then I layered them from tallest to shortest, alternating the two colors. This was a huge pain! Tulle is not the easiest material to work with. I ended up taking one of the 12" tall folded pieces and laying it down and pinning it. Then I took the other 12" tall folded piece, laid it carefully on top, and made sure that the fold was reasonably straight. Then I took out the pins on the first piece to pin through both pieces. And so on, until I had all the pieces layered.

I put in some more pins to hold the layers together and did a basting seam about an inch from the fold. A basting seam is just a very loose seam that is designed to hold the pieces together temporarily. On my machine, I set the thread tension to 0 (as loose as possible) and the stitch length to 4 (as long as possible) to baste. It was a little hard to sew and so my basting seam ended up kinda crooked, but that was fine, since it was only temporary.

Then I gathered the tulle pieces to match Littles' waist. This was easy to do with the basting seam. I just pulled on one of the pieces of thread and that gathered the fabric right up. I kept pulling until it was the right length, then redistributed the tulle evenly along the basting seam.

At that point, it was time to add a ribbon for the waist. I used 2 yards of 1.5" grosgrain ribbon. I centered the tulle on the ribbon (since the ribbon was much longer than the gathered tulle) and pinned down the edges of the tulle. Then I added a bunch more pins in between to keep it in the right place. Finally, I sewed a seam down the middle of the ribbon. The original instructions called for folding the ribbon over the gathered tulle and sewing it again, but I liked the way it looked with the ribbon at the back. To finish it off, I removed the original basting seam.

It might sound complicated, but it was pretty easy, aside from working with the tulle! Here's the finished product...

From the back:

Close up showing the gathered tulle and how it is sewed to the ribbon:

Littles doesn't usually have dance class during school breaks, but she had a special make-up class this Thursday, so I gave her the tutu in time to wear it for class. She didn't take it off the rest of the day :)

I don't love the way it turned out. I made the waist a little too big. And it's very hard to tie the ribbon tight enough so that there isn't a big gaping hole on the back. I may experiment with adding some elastic on the waist to see if I can help with both problems. But certainly, it works well enough for now!