Last Tuesday night, I met an artist named Martine Myrup. She told me she did some 3D object sewing, with polygons and such, as seen here on her blog. I wasn’t into the polygon stuff, but I knew how to do origami (paper folding), and on my run today, I got the idea to try some origami out of fabric. What resulted was the crane below out of fleece. I made it out of fleece because fabric could look rather like paper, which is great for many things. However, I wanted to make sure people could be sure it looked like fabric and not paper that I might have claimed to be fabric. You know, as if I had fabricated the whole thing! 🙂

Fleece Origami Crane

To help do the origami, I stuck some medium weight interfacing on the back. With each fold, I ironed it down to help it stay. Fleece was hard to work with because it does not fold easily, was soft and thick, and couldn’t be ironed scorching hot. So having had success here, all the future fabric origami I’ll be doing will be downhill!

Now, what the heck would somebody do with fabric origami, you might ask? Well, what do you know that’s worn, fabric and folded intricately? Handkerchiefs, maybe? I don’t know about you, but I never actually use those handkerchiefs. I don’t find them practical, and don’t care to stick it back into a suit if I did use it. It’s decorative to me. So that’s where I’ll be applying this in my future fashion. I can make “flat” origami, including this crane with its wings folded up or down. With thin, smooth and shiny handkerchief fabrics, I can make some rather nice pins of a handkerchiefs to wear!

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