1.5 Million Butterflies for Holocaust Children

The Holocaust Museum Houston is hosting The Butterfly Project, collecting 1.5 million hand-made butterflies by Spring, 2012, when they go on exhibit. I heard about The Butterfly Project through the Origami list operating out of MIT. The idea was to make a lot of origami butterflies and send them to the museum by June 30, 2011. I immediately thought of my favorite origami butterfly, the one by Italian David Derudas.

Derudas has a website at OriDavid. His diagrams for the butterfly are at: http://digilander.libero.it/oridavid/tecnicafarf.htm. By the way, the butterfly on his website is called "Farfalla." I guess that is Italian for butterfly! 

Here is a picture of David and Tomoko Fuse. It's great seeing two of my favorite folders together!  I have loved Derudas's butterfly since the first time I folded it.  I was turned on to this butterfly by my friend Deiby in Brasil.  (He is really into folding insects!)

The other thing I thought of doing, when I saw the

 The Butterfly Project advertised, was to crochet butterflies.  There are a zillion crochet butterflies on the internet, and even a web page listing many crochet butterfly pattern links at Crochet Pattern Central. Here is one example of a crochet butterfly. They are generally made with steel hooks and crochet thread, but some are made with bigger hooks and heavier yarn, even up to worsted weight yarn. I like the thinner yarns better and view this as an opportunity to try out thread and steel hooks.