Paper Crane (Orizuru)

Fold sequence

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Step 1

Square 15 cm, white side up. Fold both diagonals as valleys and both centre lines as valleys, then collapse onto the preliminary base — a square with four open flaps.

Step 2

Make sure all four corners of the preliminary base are exactly on top of each other, then place it with the open end down.

Step 3

Fold the lower left edge of the top layer in to the centre line, then the lower right edge in to the centre line. These two folds make a kite shape.

Step 4

Fold the top triangle of the kite down over the two flaps, crease, and unfold it.

Step 5

Open the top layer upward using the crease from step 4 and squash it flat so the sides swing in to the centre. This is the petal fold.

Step 6

Turn the model over and repeat steps 3 to 5 on the back. You now have the bird base: two long thin points and two short flaps.

Step 7

Reverse fold the front point up and inward to make the head, and the back point up and inward to make the tail. Both folds sit the same distance from the point base.

Step 8

Bend the tip of the head down with a small inside reverse fold to form the beak.

Step 9

Fold both wings down so their tips meet over the body. Fold one wing down further than the other so the crane stands.

Step 10

Open the wings out from the body and press a slight curve into each one with your thumb. Push the body down at the centre so the crane sits on its feet.

Show the whole sequence on one page

The bird base is the whole model

Steps 1 to 6 build the bird base: a square collapsed on both diagonals with two long points and two short ones. The test of a good bird base is that all four flaps can be opened to exactly 90 degrees without the centre splitting. If they cannot, the preliminary base in step 3 was folded off-centre by more than about 0.5 mm.

The two inside reverse folds

Steps 7 and 8 are where most cranes go wrong. An inside reverse fold turns a point back on itself from the inside, so the crease is hidden between the layers. The head and tail points must be reversed at the same height: measure from the base of each point, not from the tip. On a 15 cm crane, the folds sit 3.8 cm up from the base of the point.

Shaping and the thousand

Steps 9 and 10 fold the wings down and bend the head over. Fold wings down at 45 degrees for a standing crane or horizontally for a hanging one. A crane from 70 gsm paper keeps a clean head fold for years; a 15 cm crane weighs 1.6 g, so a thousand of them weigh 1.6 kg, which is why the thousand-crane chains are usually strung on 6-strand embroidery floss rather than thread.