Verdaia

How to Fold a Changali Ceremonial Marriage Fold

These are instructions on how to create the origami fold featured in my series Across the Jade Sea.

This image shows the completed fold in it's two forms, the “flower form”, for display, at the top, and a flat form that is used for transportation or storage, at the left. On the right is what the bottom of the figure looks like.

The fold is designed to be useable with most sizes of rectangular paper.

If no measuring tool is available, the folds can be accurately located by the following method:

1. Fold the paper in half, crease and unfold.
2. Find the halfway point of the left half of the paper. Mark it, dividing the half into quarters. but do not fold.
3. Find the halfway point of the right quarter. Mark it, dividing the quarter into eighths, but do not fold.
4. Find the halfway point of the left eighth. Mark it, dividing the eighth into sixteenths, but do not fold.
5. Find the halfway point of the right sixteenth. Mark it, dividing the sixteenth into thirtyseconds, but do not fold.
6. Find the halfway point of the left thirty-second. Mark it, fold, crease and unfold. The paper is now divided into a third, a sixth and a half.
7. Fold the right side of the paper over to the leftmost fold. Crease and unfold. The paper now shows a third, a sixth, a sixth and a third.
8. Fold both side edges over to the nearest folds, dividing the thirds in half. Unfold, you now have six equal sections.


Fold up the corner of the paper to find the distance that matches the diagonal distance of two sixths by one sixth. Fold the bottom of the paper up at that distance. Fold the extra paper that shows above the edge of this fold, down across the doubled paper. Rotate the paper, so that if you unfolded the top section, the smaller, extra portion is at the bottom, and the two equal sections are on top. Like so.



If you unfolded the paper to make sure you had the position right, refold it. The height of the folded paper should now be the diagonal distance of two sixths by one sixth.



Re-fold each of the five creases, so that they fold away from you. Then create diagonal folds from the upper right to the bottom left of each sixth section, that fold toward you.



Now working from the left to the right, fold the diagonals up and the straight folds back. When you have done this for all eleven folds you should have a hexagon shaped figure.



Carefully tuck the lose end underneath the figure. Now both the top and botton of your figure should look like the bottom of the figure shown above. A hexagon, with six folds radiating out from the center.



Unfold the hexagon, and lift the top fold. (The one that doesn't have the extra width folded over on top of it.)



Refold the diagonal and straight folds, as you did before, but only using the bottom half of the paper (the one with the extra width folded across it). This will cause the top half of the paper to stand up at right angles. When you finish (don't forget to tuck the loose edges underneath), your pattern of six radiating folds will be at the bottom of a hexagon-shaped tube formed by the top half of the paper.

Now refold the diagonal and straight folds of the top half of the paper, down across the bottom half, and tuck the ends into the center of the figure. Once again both the top and the bottom of the figure should show the six radiating folds.



Take the top layer of the hexagon and fold the hexagon edge into the middle of the figure. Crease and unfold. Repeat with all six sides.



Refold the first edge into the middle again. This time, take the top left corner, and tuck it into the little diagonal folded pocket formed on the right. Use the creases previously made... this will pull the second edge up toward the middle. Repeat the process of tucking the corner into the pocket for the remaining five sides. You have now completed the flat form of the fold.



To turn it into the flower form, pull the corners back out of their pockets, and adjust the folds until they are symmetrical.