slow and steady - or not

I have really struggled to work more than about 2 1/2 hours a day on the gown. Too many pains.

And suddenly, here is another week. But I am making progress slowly.
I wanted an exposed zip and had one in brown with metal teeth. Cool.
I tacked it into the lining. And after a bit of inside out, unpick and redo sort of thing, I got it in there.

At this stage I was thinking of doing something wing-like with the extra waterfall parts hanging by the zip. the previous photo shows them held open.

So, the fabric I am using is a leather-like fabric. It has a sort of alligator texture embossed into the thin plastic layer on top. The backing is a knit fabric. It is so soft and very drapey. and has a bit of stretch to it.
However, it is also very heavy. So, when I started doing the draping, I had to work out some issues.

I wanted folds like overlapping scales. But because it was heavy, I needed to work out distances of folds (I didn't want them regular all the way down) without a lot of holding up, putting down.

So, I took a flexible measuring tape and folded out lengths on it, adjusting as I went along. Besides, I wanted to know how long a piece to cut off.

So, then I marked the folds on the fabric with chalk, folded them out.
Most leathery fabric has to be handled carefully because pin holes don't seal over. So, I started with masking tape to hold the folds in place.

But the fabric was too heavy to hold when I was manipulating sections of fabric into the folds and taking round to the back.

So, I tried somewhat fine pins. No problems, the marks sealed over.

But the front was taking a bit too much pulling for the fine pins to stay stuck in the dummy. So I went ahead with just pinning the folds in place.

However, I did have to use a stool to rest the bottom portion of the fabric on, because this stuff loves gravity!

and from there it was getting everything in place.

Stay tuned.