As a closet botanist, I am interested in floral geometry – many flowers are based on pentagons:
This is “Star Katrina”, a beautiful kusudama designed by Xander Perrott. Folded from 30 x 2:root 3 rectangles cleaved from squares of Tuttle Indigo dye duo paper over the last couple of days.
The unit is based on a tight triangle grid – fairly easy to fold accurately and the locking mechanism is so positive that this kusudama is held together via paper tension and friction only (no glue, truly, none).
I am often given 6″ origami paper by well-intentioned friends who know I do origami and assume 6″ paper is useful to me. I have lots of it – and I mostly use it to fold kusudama:
I had a pile of duo Tuttle watermelon/lime duo paper, so resolved to treat it to make it more interesting. I bought some acrylic inks a while back, and a mouth airbrush, so decided to tone the pages while learning how the airbrush works – a fun experiment.
I chose to spatter the watermelon side with white ink, and the lime side got yellow and black spatters. The effect is quite lovely and delicate – it compliments the geometry of the model really well.
I had seen a youtube tutorial of Kovács Vincéné’s “Nova” kusudama, and I thought the geometry really interesting. Like many spikey balls, 30 units in 5/3 clusters makes a nice little structure.
Stumbling through my socials, I noticed a video tutorial of a reverse-engineered model originally designed by Ekaterina Lukasheva and knew I needed to try it:
This 30 unit modular ball is a lovely bit of engineering, you make a bow-tie shaped unit and then, via a series of really positive locked tabs in pockets you form groups of 3 units that swirl around 5-unit shaped holes.
I chose Tuttle indigo dye duo paper and split each sheet into 4 squares, meaning the units were small but manageable. Construction was fairly easy – the units lock together fairly well but during construction the whole structure is really floppy. It is not until you have a near sphere that the paper tension kicks in and stabilises the shape – the final unit pulls the sphere round.
The Tuttle paper was a little thin, structure-wise, but folding this from thicker paper would begin to compromise the accuracy of the folding, making it less spherical – an interesting balancing act.
Each year for the last 10 or so, as part of the “getting to know you” phase of a new year with my pastoral care group, we fold a kusudama together:
The idea is simple, invite kids to sit, learn how to fold a module, then teach it to another mate … resulting in enough modules to assemble a megastructure.
This year I chose a 30 module designed by Vladimir Frolov, a Russian designer, a lovely starry ball.
The metaphor is really simple: “The WHOLE is greater than the SUM OF IT’S PARTS”
So to avoid doing the growing list of things I should be doing, I decided on some procrastigami:
One of the many “I must fold these” models from Xander Perrott’s forthcoming books, this is “Laveau”, a lovely 30 unit spikey flower ball that makes good use of duo paper.
Each unit, based on a 1:root(3) rectangle, folded from Tuttle Vibrant duo, I chose limey/crimson paper and began folding – I always love the almost meditative state you enter when unit folding on a production line – much the same as gridding before box pleating and tessellations.
Test folding is different to model folding, the brief is to see how easy to follow the diagrams are, how reproducible the forms are and what sense the written instructions make.
As all the models in this book are unit-based, I folded 3 or 4 of the modules (rather than the entire 30+) to check the 2 types of joins and how regular the construction methods can become. There is a wonderful mix and variety of spikey balls in this new (as yet unpublished) collection, and the skill levels to complete them range from fairly easy to nearly impossible – which is good, challenges abound for all levels of folder competence.
Unit and join testing – 3+5joints (“Star Virus” kusudama)
Xander commonly uses some funky paper ratios in his base-papers. Commonly 1:root(3), but this collection uses 2:root(3) and more exotically 6:5root(3). The paper ratio allows construction of accurate angles (many based of multiples of 60 degrees), and the book demonstrates nicely how to cut sheets of this ratio from more conventional sized paper.
Each kusudama has it’s own quirks, tricks and stress points, all require accuracy and nice paper (most showcase duo coloured paper in flamboyant and wondrous ways).
I have not folded a book “cover to cover” since I was a kid (who only owned a only couple of origami books) – it was an intense but hopefully useful journey as I made notes about the instruction set, unit folding and assembly process, subsequently passing this on to Xander for his consideration.
As I approach retirement age, I can see myself doing more in the meta origami world, having already established myself as an origami book editor and test folder – having time to do this without having to shoe-horn it inbetween school commitments is a luxury I am looking forward to.
Procrastination aside, folding units for a new kusadama is always an adventure. This “parquetry” ball looks like it is made from strips of machined timbers. I decided on 3 colours, reasoning that I should be able to evenly spread the edges around the ball:
Due to the interconnections, the plan nearly worked, but the ball is lovely none the less. I really like the locking mechanism – the resultant ball is rigid and self-supporting.
As part of the Sydney Origami group’s weekly challenge, we were tasked with a modular:
This is Regenbogen, designed by Maria Vahrusheva, described in the following Youtube tutorial video
The units (you need 30 for a ball of this configuration) are quite easy to fold (I managed to teach them to my Pastoral Care group kids – their version of this fold is still a work in progress … yes, I have folded nearly 2 of these now) and luckily (for boys at least) consists of mostly folding in half – something most people can do.
Leafing through my copy of Drawing Origami Tome 2, I noticed a spectacular modular designed by Francesco Mancini that I knew I had to try:
Modules folded from 2×1 rectangles lock together really nicely, creating clusters of 3 and 5, forcing the megastructure to curve gently into a spikey ball. Continue reading →
When friends travel, often they find lovely small bits of Washi. Packs of this are full of a myriad of lovely traditional prints, rich colours often embossed and overlayed with gold.
The tricksey bit is to work out what to do with it – given it’s size and often the overpowering beauty of the design.Continue reading →
