One of the many models I have had on my “to fold” pile for ages is Chen Xiao’s “Walking in the Rain”:

This box-pleated model seems to have taken me an age to complete for many reasons (including what I consider a weakness of box pleating), but finally I committed a square of pre-prepared Wenzhou paper to a rendering of this design.

The paper was previously Eco Dyed: Sandwiched between each layer of the folded up sheet was various vegetative matter – onion skins, tea leaves and other tannin-based plants. This bundle was boiled for a few hours in a “dirty pot” containing red cabbage and purple carrots. The cooled bundle was then carefully washed to remove all the bits of vegetation leaving subtle stains. This paper I called “Cherry Blossom” Wenzhou because the dappled pinks and muted browns reminded me of blossom trees.

The BASE for this model is an interesting tangle of flaps, points and a thick central bundle. SHAPING that tangle has taken me an age. One of the side effects of using box pleating (grid-based collapse) is that everything is derived from grids – you have to work really hard to then soften these rigid lines to make it resemble something more organically shaped. I made a maquette from thin brown Kraft paper to work out the general layout of what went where, which point became what feature etc. I also used the maquette to come up with a solution for the umbrella, and how the Kimono/sleeves integrated into what looks like a single garment, and also what the do with the hair.

I chose to vary my rendition from a lot that I had seen because … reasons – it has been a back and forth process for a few weeks deciding to land on this rendition.

Origami continues to fascinate me – my manipulating a flat sheet, you can create virtually anything you can imagine. The challenge in this model is to make the figure appear light, fluid and gentle. I am not sure I managed to do that, but I am finally happy with it after much procrastination and agonising.

I like that the model is self-standing, from most angles the umbrella looks like it is over her shoulder, and the kimono flows from the body in pleasing ways. The Crease Pattern (CP) of the model is asymmetrical (by necessity, one side has to allocate paper to the umbrella), so the paper allocation for each arm, and the fabric for the kimono are not evenly distributed. This requires you to be creative in how you then shape these features.

I do not think I am very good at box pleating, but am happy to have learned a few things folding this model. The tiny size was a real challenge – my nerve-damaged fat clumsy fingers failed me at numerous points in this model, resorting to stylus, tweezers and other tools to help me refine the finer details.