DIY Origami - An Obsession!!

I'm going to be selling a collection of upcycled jewelry based on the theme of "Origami" at the Togetherly pop up at Orchard Central from 11am - 10pm, 15th Oct - 18th Oct! This is the first time I have sold anything I made since the Handmade Movement in 2013, well I was given a little nudge to explore other things.

My Origami Obsession - How Did It Start?

I've been obsessed with origami ever since I attended a Futures Practice organised by Sustainable Living Lab. We were rethinking the common shoe - how could it be redesigned to be sustainable. Our team came up with an origami shoe that was zero waste and involved less sewing. We called it the Bak Chang shoe!

Although we haven't taken the project further (yet!), I was very interested in how others had applied origami in design. Many fashion designers have used origami in their collections, including Yamamoto and Kenzo.

Some DIY was in order.  I borrowed this "Folding Techniques for Designers" and I started folding and folding .....

I ended up with a box full of origami samples

Sewists do Origami!

So from all this I realised that, hey, we sewists do a bit of origami when we sew. We pleat, we smock and we make folds of all sorts of shapes and sizes; we just give it a different name!

Pleats, Flowers and Bak Chang

Here are my creations - they're all made from factory off-cuts. The first one is inspired pleats (and also the box pleats in the book) and flowers.

The second one was inspired by bak chang, a traditional snack or meal eaten by the Chinese during Duan Wu Festival (Dragon Boat Festival). It's glutinous rice, meat and beans wrapped up in lotus or bamboo leaves.

Which one do you prefer?