Finally, it’s become warm enough to be able to wear boardshorts around here. For me, I love to wear men’s boardshorts since the women’s versions are too short for me.

Plus, men’s boardies come in all sorts of crazy prints, so the crazier, the better for me. The fabric they’ve come out with now is absolutely incredible- it feels like wearing pajamas.
My fricken favorite pair right now is these Quiksilver Editions I picked up from the local outlet store. The downside is, it had all sorts of stiff Velcro in the fly and on the side pocket. Blech. I hate Velcro on boardshorts- it snags in the wash and it pokes me in the stomach when I’m paddling. So, I decided to give these shorts a bit of a makeover.

Upon closer inspection, you can see what I can’t stand: Velcro in the crotch!

I used a seam ripper to remove the Velcro- the majority was pretty easy, until I got to the very bottom where the fly came together.

I could have just cut straight across he bottom and left the rest of the Velcro encased in the stitching in the fly.

Instead, I removed the anchor stitching on the front of the fly and took out ALL of the Velcro.

I’m removing the stitches.
Tough job, but worth it.

Next, I tackled the Velcro on the pocket. You can even see where the inner pocket is snagged on the Velcro!

For shame!

I had a thought at this point- for those who are new to seam rippers, here’s a few tips:

When I start to remove the Velcro, I start on the Velcro side and use the sharp point to find the stitch to break it. Be careful not to stab the fabric:
I’m starting on the outside track of stitching first.

Once that stitch is broken, you should be able to start to separate the Velcro from the fabric. At this point, I took my seam ripper (with the ball tip side down) into the seam and moved the ripper forward along the seam between the Velcro and the fabric:
With the ball tip down in the seam, this prevents any snags in the fabric. All that nice fluid fabric is finally free to move!

Ok- now, yeah, the Velcro issue is solved, but, the fly is open.

Yikes.

On some of my other fancy boardshorts, there’s a nice solution I’ve found to take care of that, and I already have the materials here to recycle. Stay tuned for Part II!
Don’t get me wrong….there’s always great uses for Velcro.