The next thing I tried in my Kusudama Origami book is the “Kirikomi Kiriko Tourou – Suisha” (切り込み切子 灯篭 – 水車) or a cut faceted waterwheel-style lantern. A bit of a mouthful, but the premise of this kusudama is that it must be cut in certain area to achieve the pinwheel design. (When making pinwheels, you must make four cuts in a certain direction.)

I chose the easiest version of this pinwheel by covering the middle with plain-coloured paper, because I made it with 7.5cm squares as usual, and found that it was too small (like, it was WAY smaller than my previous models). Complicated versions add a flower in the centre. Ideally, you want your patterned paper to be double-sided with a different colour.

To decorate, I made a pair of harebells and attached them to the ends of the pink twine. This was two of four harebells; getting the shape to stay together was difficult!

My regrets were that I didn’t use full-sized 15cm paper for this model. It came out too small, and I would have been able to add a flower to the centre had I done that. The harebells look as big as the model! But it’s done now. I don’t think it looks that bad anyway…

Materials: Six 7.5cm squares of patterned chiyogami, six 3.75cm squares of dual-sided pink paper, two 7.5cm squares of dual-sized pink paper, pink and dark pink twine