My third Mermaid Tail! These have been very popular. All have been by request, at the age of about 6 or 7. This one is for my youngest granddaughter. She picked the colors herself (see color inspiration photo at left)!

This time, I followed exactly what I did for the first one, the only exception being how I attached the fin. Instead of mattress stitching the front and back of the fin separately, this time I sandwiched all three layers together and used a running stitch through all layers at once, and then back across to reinforce.

On the second one I did, I had tried to make the fin look thicker in the middle by doing one less stair step on either side (working down to 23 sts instead of 20), but this sort of backfired on me, making the fin actually look narrower in general, because there were fewer rows. So I didn’t do that this time.

I think the answer to making the fin look thicker is probably to gather it more, but that didn’t really occur to me until after I had finished this third one, when it all sort of comes back to you after being away from it for several years. So I don’t really think that I gathered this one enough. I guess that would be easy enough to go back and do now, after the fact, but I think it looks ok as it is.

So here are my notes, repeated pretty much exactly from my previous efforts:
Started with Foundation dc rather than a chain, but I needed 151 of them rather than 150 per the pattern. Don’t know why no one else has mentioned this. Maybe it’s just me, but it didn’t work out evenly for me with 150.

Worked the whole thing flat, carrying the colors up the side rather than cutting them, and seamed it up at the end with mattress stitch, leaving the top 30 rows open. Then did one row of single crochet around the opening.

Did 80 rows total, including 12 rows of a gradual decrease, beginning on row 69, as follows (thanks to susansands excellent project notes for this):

Rows 1-3 (69-71): Replace shell with 2dc, ch, 2dc
Rows 4-6 (72-74): Replace shell with 3dc
Rows 7-9 (75-77): Replace shell with dc, ch, dc
Rows 10-12 (78-80): Replace shell with dc

Fin:
I followed an alternate fin pattern by Annoo, which begins at approximately minute 15 of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A33RmatUb6g. I began with 62 Fhdc, and worked each side down to 20 sts, working back and forth in rows, doing hdc in the back loop only, chaining 1 to turn, and leaving 3 stitches unworked every other row. Per her instructions, I fastened off the first half, but did not fasten off the second, using the working yarn to seam the two halves together with sc, through both loops, leaving the last 3 stitches unworked.

I attached the fin to the body as mentioned above, by sandwiching the whole thing together with a running stitch. I began by matching up the center of the fin to the center of the body (I had seamed up the side of the body to close the circle, but hadn’t yet sewn the bottom closed), and used a long piece of yarn, pulled half-way through to begin stitching in the center, so that I had a length to use from the center out for each side, thereby minimizing the number of ends, and also the wear & tear on the yarn. I gathered it a bit on each side before stitching, but as I said above, I think I could have gathered it more.

I hope this one is as well received as the others have been!