787: (237/365) Daffy Down Dilly

Today (August 25) is Daffodil Day, daffodils being the icon associated with cancer awareness and fundraising for an eventual cure. You can get involved, donate or buy badges and sponsored bunches of flowers to show your support:

This seems to be a traditional model (sorry, I have yet to identify the designer) but is related to folds I have been exploring for a week or so based on non-squares. Continue reading

786: (236/365) Beth Johnson’s Hex Owl

I cannot believe I have not tried this before:

A lovely hexagonal tessellation in one corner of a hexagon becomes the fluffy tummy, collapsing the body makes for lovely eyes and a pair of crenellated wings. Continue reading

662: (112/365) Spiral Corrugation

Origami seems to be the new Materials Engineering black, being considered a contemporary alternative approach to fabrication and structure:

I was reading an article on deploying large solar arrays in space. This problem is not unique – everything taken into space must be small at launch so it can fit in a rocket. Continue reading

Folding Algorithms – Sato Rose

Much of Origami is algorithmic (algorithm = procedural solution to a problem). A rabbit ear is an algorithm, one knows how to fold it on a corner – double rabbit ear is the same solution, folded two simultaneously. Petal fold is also a standard maneuver which got me thinking of the Sato Rose algorithm.

I like this algorithm particularly because of the free-form nature of much of the folding, and the way it seems to “fit” a pentagon. I decided to use the same folding algorithm but try it with other regular polygons – I tried triangle(3), square(4), pentagon(5), hexagon(6), heptagon(7), octagon(8), nonagon(9) but gave up on the decagon(10).

The algorithm involves “nearly” bisecting each vertex to form an echo shape at the centre of the sheet – you then halve that internal echo to create a slightly offset echo and use that as the basis of a “kawasaki twist” Continue reading

238: Daffodil Day

In Australia, August 26 this year is nominated as “Daffodil Day”:

We celebrate the lives of those brave people who have fought cancer in all it’s forms – to do so we use a flower, the fragile symbol of hope and beauty:

I made a white one, then folded 4 in colour and scattered then strategically around my school. I remembered, if few others did initially. I do this in memory of some dear friends that lost the fight and suffer no more.

A complex and time-consuming fold,  the flower head is dense and made, unusually from a hexagon cut from an A3 sheet, it collapses down to a life-size bloom via some interesting sinking, swivels and squash folds. An interesting (and cathartic) fold designed by Paul Jackson, taken from a book loaned to me by Amanda (thanks @ackygirl)

I hope you remembered Daffodil Day, or at the very least people you know who have been touched by Cancer.