Sewing boardshorts: Ayelet’s Everett Shorts hack

Ayelet here! I turned the beloved Everett Pants & Shorts into boardshorts to make my dream swimsuit set—keep reading to learn how!

For years now, I’ve been hacking patterns in pursuit of my dream swimsuit, and I think I’ve finally done it!

But first, a quick trip down memory lane.

My previous swimwear hacks

My first attempt six years ago was the Ipswich Swimsuit—I hacked the top to use the style lines of the internal swim bra, and added a fun crossover back:

Next up, I tried combining the front of the Orange Lingerie Boylston Bra with the back of the Ipswich Swimsuit to make a bikini top, and turned the Belmont Leggings into make swim shorts. (You can read more about that here.)

After we released the Willowdale Bra, I *had* to try it as a swimsuit, so I combined the front of the Willowdale again with the Ipswich back into a biniki top and turned the Ashwood Pants into swim shorts:

I loved all those swimsuits in their time, but heading into this summer with two young kids, I needed something a little different from my swimsuit.

A swimsuit for family swim time

If you’ve ever been to the beach with kids under 5, you know that there’s way less lounging and way more running around and bending down to fish little humans out of the water or to stop them from eating sand. You’re lucky if you get a chance to put on your own sunscreen—and gradually getting used to the icy water? Not a chance! Your child wants to dive right in, and so must you.

So this summer, I wanted a swimsuit with more coverage and that enabled me to better keep up with my kids. I was getting very excited about our Bonair Athletic Top release, and I wanted turn it into a matching set.

The previous summer, I had picked up a few men’s boardshorts to wear to the pool. And it will surprise no one when I say that they were more comfortable, more practical, and of course, fit my curves terribly. So I was determined to make my very own pair of boardshorts.

My first step was to find the right fabric. After many hours of searching, I found this origami whale print on Spoonflower that I fell in love with. And after more hours of agonizing (would I love this print for years to come?) I ordered it in their sport lycra and their stretch woven fabric.

Then I needed the right pattern. Thankfully we were about to release the Everett Pants & Shorts, and it felt like the perfect base for this hack.

Turning the Everett into boardshorts

Here’s how I turned the Everett Shorts into comfortable, practical, and well-fitting boardshorts:

1. I sewed buttonholes in the waistband and added a drawstring
2. I added a pocket facing and made the pockets out of this mesh fabric from Fabric Fairy
3. I left off the cuffs
4. I added built-in mesh undies!

For the built-in undies, I used the high-rise bottoms from the Marblehead Swimsuit. I tried a couple different approaches to get the Marblehead waist to match the Everett waist (including slash and spread, which turned out terribly) and ultimately ended up just adding a wedge to the side edge of the pattern piece (the red shaded area shown here):

That’s probably not how you would actually draft built-in undies, but it worked!

Here’s how I constructed the boardshorts:

1. I sewed the shorts, stopping before attaching the waistband.
2. I sewed the undies, finishing the legs with narrow swim elastic (sewn to the wrong side, then folded and sewn again to enclose).
3. I then placed the undies into the shorts, (with the wrong side of the undies facing the wrong side of the shorts) basted those two layers together, and then attached the waistband.

It took me all summer to make muslins and sew up the swim set (see: two small children) and I finished it just days before my family’s annual beach trip. But I was thrilled with how it turned out! I wore it several times on the trip with my striped Willowdale/Ipswich hacked bikini top underneath.

Here’s an inside view:

I have a little bit of the fabric left, so next summer I hope to make a matching bikini top to wear underneath. And maybe one day I’ll have time to make matching swimsuits for my kids as well—hopefully before they’re old enough to think that matching your mom is lame.

Are you dreaming up any fun swimwear hacks? Tell me about them in the comments below!