Sewing challenge make life jacket inescapable for kaylee

Kaylee is definitely my climber and my escape artist. She escapes everything including her pool flotation devices and rafts. As soon as we get to the pool, she starts running away or climbing out of the stroller. I tried letting her swim with a life jacket which didn't work because she is short to the ground and floats up onto her back while wearing it. That just makes her mad. She can't play while always floating on her back.

So I bought the US Coast Guard approved life swimming vest shown above. The only problem is that Kaylee is too skinny to keep it on.



Adjusted to the tightest it will go around her and as you can see her arms slide out and it falls down. The photos are blurry too because this kids never stops running.

So the challenge today is figure out how to keep this life vest on Kaylee.

The method I propose is to sew temporary buttons onto the back of the sleeves. Then attach buttonhole elastic to keep the arm floats up without restricting her movement.
Then, I will tighten the safety strap in the back by folding the edge over and sewing it to the vest. This should temporarily hold the vest at a smaller chest size. These will be only temporary fixes that can be removed when she is big enough to use the vest.





As you can see this was a pretty easy fix but to make it a little less obvious I sewed the elastic to a wide polka dot grosgrain ribbon that matched the vest color that I had here.



Then I sewed tiny buttons onto the sleeves.


Sewed buttons onto both sleeves.


Then I just buttoned the elastic ribbon onto the vest.


I put it on Kaylee and took her to the pool. It worked like a charm and when Kaylee my escape artist got into the water her life vest stayed on and she could move her arms just fine.


Here is an action shot of her running with her new life vest on.

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