Sewing project - upcycled beach cover up!!

I made up this beach cover up for my grand daughter who is going to a Guide camp out east this summer.  Her Mom thought a beach cover up would be a good idea, bought several coordinating t-shirts at the thrift store and provided the instruction in the way of a library book with ideas for teen sewing projects.  I was more than willing to do the sewing.  I combined two t-shirts to make the cover up using a more lightweight pink one I had on hand from a garage sale for the bottom.  It was more comparable in weight and fabric which will mean that they should dry at about the same rate when it gets wet.
I cut the sleeves off the navy one and simply turned over the edge and used pink thread and a triple zig zag stitch to finish it off.  I left the navy one as it was and cut the pink one long enough to make the cover up just above the knee on me so it will be a little shorter on my grand daughter as she is grown a lot this year.  Once I cut the pink t shirt I ran a basting stitch along the cut edge, gathered it just enough to fit in the bottom of the navy one and folded the seam allowance over on the stitching line.  I pinned the fold to the inside of the navy one to line up with the stitching on the hem.  I used the same triple zigzag stitch using pink thread to sew the two together which put the decorative stitch just nicely within the two lines of stitching on the hem of the navy shirt.  It helps to make it look like it was originally all one piece and coordinates with the stitching on the arm holes.  I cut a strip off of the remaining piece of the pink shirt to make a tie knotting each end and fringing the ends.  I dug through my stash and found a piece of trim that coordinated so I made two loops and hand stitched them to the cover up on either side of the middle just a bit lower than the natural waist line so that there would be a bit of extra on the top when it gathered.  I embellished the loops with pink buttons.  These will be easy to move should they not be in the right place as I did not have my grand daughter around to try it on when I was sewing!!  I am sure it will do the trick for her trip and will be a good thing to have for the summer when they got to the beach.        Therese