Making My Fabric Tail - Part 1

Hello!

Today was a good day! Over the past couple months, I have been planning and designing and setting up for making my first fabric tail, and now I have everything save for a couple finishing touches.
Here's the first design:

The main differences from this design and my final are the shape of the fluke and the amount of damage to the webbing, which in this design I thought I would just use a different fabric of essentially the same type.

At this step, I changed the size and shape of the dorsal and fluke, and I decided to try a different fabric for the webbing, so I chose a rubberized vinyl, but wasn't really sure how to get it.

This art I made of my River Dragon Character was more aligned with what I wanted my tail to represent, and so I started working on how I would sew and attach fabric and fit the monofin in the fluke. This was also when I decided to add pectoral fins and played with the idea of having two dorsal fins, I may still do this if I have enough vinyl.

When I settled on how the tail might look, I was really excited, I mean, look at this concept! I think that I will have to get somewhat creative for the belly scales, but not too much, they may just be made of the same vinyl as the fins, but not colored.

And now the materials!

The body fabric - a very shimmery 4-way stretch mix of 80% polyester and 20% spandex, with green-purple color-shifting scales, absolutely in love with this fabric!

What it might look like stretched over my legs. I realized at this point that the fabric scales have a lined pattern, and deciding how I wanted that to lay was very important.

This picture makes me laugh every time I see it. That smiling shark is Niles, the Great White, and he is so photobombing! Anyway, this is the vinyl that I decided on, black rubber-backed metallic green. The plan for this was to cut out the entirety of the fin and spray-paint the edges purple before sewing the main body fabric over the top for the "veins" of the tail.

The color is called Purple Haze, and it sprays super smooth and looks great in the test piece I did:

I mean just look at that gradient! That small bump you see is the hole for the sample strips I got when I was testing out colors and feels of vinyl before settling on this one. The shimmer is maintained between the green and the purple and I love how it looks!

For sewing the whole thing together, I decided to get outdoor-grade strength polyester thread in a dark green color, to minimize the unsightly look of seam stitching, if there is much to see.

Which brings me to the most exciting and important piece of the tail making process, my new Singer Confidence Sewing Machine. I really want to thank James Smith for purchasing this machine for me and talking with me throughout these last few months of stress. I'm so excited to give this baby a try!

And now the process, which will be spanning a few posts, but the first part is super important: Patterning!

I started by taking my measurements for my waist, hips, thighs, knees, calves, and ankles, then placing lines on a taped-together map of paper. I sketched out the curves on one side and rub-transferred some graphite to the other side and made that a symmetrical pattern. For the monofin, I traced around the entire monofin, then cut that part off, knowing I had to then make the design of my fluke over the monofin trace.

This part was actually quite difficult, because not only did I need to make a large fluke that would still be able to conform to my monofin, I also wanted the lower end to look like it belonged with the rest of the tail. The thin arms of the fluke and center tail part will be a continuation of the body fabric cut and sewn onto the vinyl fluke with some texture and support for the rays coming from folding the fabric under itself before sewing it down. To make the monofin removable, I decided to stitch the two sides of the fluke separately after the monofin, and use strong velcro to keep that last trailing bit from flapping apart. The part above the monofin on the sides will most likely be kept together using ruber cement.

Big boye fluke! This sucker is almost as long as the main body that will go around me (Which is 38" from waist to ankle). This piece doesn't weigh as much as a silicone fluke, but it still weighs at least 5lbs by itself. Thanks to the way the vinyl is made, it isn't at risk of fraying apart. I may still run some rubber cement or possibly just warm the sides with an iron.

This is where I ended tonight, and I know it will take a couple weekends before everything is done, but I'm so ready to do this, and I can't wait to be able to swim in this.

Thanks for reading! Love and bubbles!

Karingan