Designed by Michael G. LaFosse
Alice Gray, an important origami pioneer, was also an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City at the same time I was visiting Lillian Oppenheimer’s Origami Center of America. We shared a subway trip from Lillian’s apartment to the museum, and inspired by Alice’s vocation I spontaneously folded an origami butterfly from a discarded piece of letter paper for her. Alice critiqued my creation and lamented that it was not from a square, since the general feeling amongst origamists in the 1970s was that all good origami must be from an uncut square. Since this design required a non-equilateral rectangle, I realized it was easy to start with a square, and simply fold one or more of the edges inward. As a bonus, the extra paper folded inward at the first steps could be fashioned later to produce interesting shapes and patterns in the final steps.
This design is actually a system of generating dozens of species of butterfly simply by mixing and matching several possible options at each of the first few steps. We have included this model to encourage creative play using origami. See if you can think through the final effect of making a particular change at an early step in the folding.
PAPER SUGGESTIONS
When using duo paper, the body will be colored differently from the wings. Although there are many duo papers prepared for the origami hobbyist, you can make your own duo papers by painting one or both sides of the sheet so that they are different. Almost any paper can be used as a base sheet. Let your imagination soar! You can apply any coloring or decorating techniques that you wish: tie-dye, sponge, spray, stamp, pencil or crayon. You can even run paper through a color printer! Just make a colored area in a graphics application and print. Flip the printed paper over and repeat with a different color, then cut out a square shape for folding. Another method of making duo paper is to paste two different sheets together. If you are making handmade paper, you can form two sheets, each a different color, and press them together, back to back. When dry, they will be a duo sheet.
1. Begin with the color desired for the wings facing up. Fold in half, edge to edge. Unfold.
2. Fold the left and right edges to the crease.
3. Fold in half, short edges together.
4. Fold in half, right-side double folded edges to the left.
5. Squash-fold the bottom corner.
6. Your paper should look like this. Turn over, left to right.
7. Squash-fold the bottom corner.
8. Fold up the bottom corner, about a quarter way down from the middle folded edge. Unfold.
9. Squash-fold the upper left and right sections, being careful to make the squash creases hit the center of the folded line made in the previous step.
10. Your paper will look like this. With the abdominal corner at the bottom, move the top layers of the hind wings down, squash-folding the bottom corners of both wings.
11. Form a mountain crease edge across the middle of a wing and move it downward, reshaping the forewing and defining a separation between the forewings and hind wings. Repeat with the other wing. If desired, turn the triangle of paper on each hind wing inside out.
12. Mountain-fold the hind wing edges under to reveal the abdomen. Fold up the top layer of the forewings.
13. Inside-reverse-fold the indicated corners at the separation point of the forewings and hind wings. Turn over, left to right.
14. Clean up the back side with the indicated folds. You can be creative with the shapes of the top folds and the mid-side folds.
15. Fold the top edges inside. Notice the notches created at the mid-side points.
16. Fold in half.
17. Fold each wing set against the body, one to the left and one to the right. You can be creative with the angle.
18. Open, display side up.
19. Your model should now look like this.
20. Head detail. Squash-fold the center rib in the head area.
21. Inside-reverse-fold the top corners, left and right.
22. Turn over, left to right.
23. Fold the edges down.
24. Turn over, left to right.
25. The finished Origamido Butterfly.
26. This version leaves the triangle layer displayed upon the hind wings.