I thought it would be nice to do another Ayame costume since I already had the wig from my first and wanted to make this outfit as soon as I saw it in the manga. ^_^ Ayame wears it to Yuki’s parent teacher conference in vol. 13 of the Fruits Basket manga (reference pic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/LadyoftheThread/misc/ayamech72.jpg)

This costume was probably more tailoring than anything else. (I have to admit I got bored at times because I like embellishment work more. ^_^;) I made the coat, ruffly shirt, necktie, and hairtie. The insides of the garments are very neat; I used flat-felled seams on the shirt and used seam binding on all the seam allowances of the coat. The coat has matching fabric-covered buttons and all the gold trim was stitched in place by hand. It was the trickiest part of the costume to make due to the cutaway section and the details with the trim. Overall, I’m quite pleased with the workmanship on the costume and it won First Place Advanced Craftsmanship in the Anime Boston 2007 hall cosplay contest. ^_^

Unfortunately, I ended up not liking how I look in it. I think the coat might just be one of those things that looks cooler drawn than in real life. :-/ I never really liked the gold/black lace overlay for the shirt; it can look very gaudy with flash and I settled for it just because I wasn’t finding anything better to match the reference and what I pictured in my head. I wish I’d used a different fabric for the coat, too, because I realized after the main construction was done that that little leaves in the brocade can seem like animal spots from a distance and large amounts of that can get overwhelming. It looks okay in some photos but I feel so gaudy wearing the thing. ._.;

It’s disappointing since I spent much longer on this costume than my previous Ayame and went through ridiculous equipment problems while working on it. The 20 year old sewing machine I usually use broke; the new one turned out to be defective after a few weeks and had to be exchanged; and the iron started leaking like crazy and had to be replaced, too. So, it took 3 sewing machines and 2 irons to finally get this costume finished. X_X;

New York Anime Festival

Anime Boston