Princess Ayeka Jurai
Tenchi Muyo

Inspiration: Tenchi was one of the first animes I ever watched. A few years ago some friends of mine made some amazing Tenchi and Ryoko costumes. This year I was lucky enough to get to join them as Ayeka. It’s always fun to cosplay from the animes that you grew up watching.

Materials/Construction Details: This costume used a basic kimono pattern, so it was relatively easy to put together. I was lucky enough to have found all the vibrant colors I needed for the costume in the same fabric. It was a knit, which made things somewhat difficult, but the fabric was just too nice to pass on.

This costume is fully lined, but before I attached the lining, I used wonderunder to iron the light yellow details in place on the outside layer and then satin stitched around all the edges. The light pink trim was made by hand and required a lot of lightweight interfacing to keep it from being ripply once applied. I attached it the same way I would attach bias tape: sewing it down on the front side and then folding it over and hand stitching it down along the back.

I used a thicker interfacing to make the turquoise obi and some soft brown vinyl for the details. I made her headpiece out of layers of worbla and the round hairpieces are custom made satin buttons with hand painted turquoise beads attached.

Wig: This wig is Arda’s Venus wig in the color plum. I bought some extra wefts to sew in, but didn’t end up needing to use them because the wig was very thick. I separated the hair I wanted to use for the longer pieces in the front and then divided the rest of the wig horizontally all the way around. The bottom half I put into pig tails and left alone, but I trimmed the top half to make her bob style. Using hairspray and a hair dryer, I puffed up the bangs and straightened out all the layers around the wig. A ton of hairspray helped me keep everything in place.