With my Renrin costume taking so long, I decided to push back the other big elaborate costume I had planned for Anime Next and do a simpler one instead.

I've been getting into Fruits Basket lately and settled on a cute yellow dress trimmed with orange flowers that Tohru wore in an illustration on the inside of one of the manga covers. (I believe it's from the back of volume 4.)

I had a large piece of pastel yellow material left over from a dress I did a few years earlier so this seemed like a good way to finally use it. ^_^ I dyed it a brighter yellow and altered a simple long dress pattern for the costume by shortening it and adding side godets to give the skirt flare.

The flowers are white artificial flowers that I dyed orange. They're attached with clip-on earring backs so I can easily remove them when the dress needs washing.

The hair accessories were made by dyeing small bouquets of ribbon roses and wrapping the stems around a barrette.

I bought the closest shoes I could find to Tohru's red platform sandals and painted the sides of the soles (originally black) with acrylic paint. The shoes didn't have straps so I made a pair from ribbon and vest buckles to make it seem like they did.

As a prop, I bought a basket and filled it with plushies to represent some of the Sohmas. The plushies were mostly bought but I did make a 5 foot long white velvet snake for Ayame.

MangaNEXT

Otakon

AnimeNEXT

AnimeNext 2005