Ladies and Gentleffolke, may I introduce to you Ms Thelma Tiggywinkle – Eric Joisel’s Adult Echidna:

I had folded Eric Joisel’s “Baby Hedgehog” early last year and noticed as part of the instructions that a scaled up version (9 ranks of quills instead of 5, based on 32ths instead of 16ths) would result in a “mother” and he was right – what a mofo of a fold, honestly!

Starting on Friday evening with a 60cm square of brown Kraft paper, I started pre-creasing – dividing up into 32nds vertically and horizontally, then diagonal creasing to create hex-grids which ended up tiny.

I had long been fascinated with the process of forming the quills – crease-crimp/collapse diamonds and then making a zig-zag trough beside one row to raise the next results in lovely paper geometry both on the outside and the underside,

After over an hour each rank of spines, the resultant paper is box-pleated into legs and the ends inside-reverse folded into toes.

The ranks are then teased out to form tail and face – a lovely fold that is soooo very cute although it is punishingly time-consuming.

Very satisfying – folds ONLY, no cuts, no glue, she needs some “wet folding” shaping but she is already very echidna-like. No idea what we will do with her, but for now she is snuffling around our house. Hope you enjoyed the journey as it played out on facebook.