2d cloth solver very very slow

[tyFlow]

There are no 3D collisions happening in your reference video, so there's no reason to simulate as cloth instead of splines. If you want you can I guess, but it'll just unnecessarily inflate the simulation time. As splines it will solve very fast. Then you just extrude the splines for an identical look.

You can use the Angle Bind operator to enforce stiffer bend angles.

See attached.