Origami Mu'umu'u & Aloha Shirt Instructions

Instructions for making an origami Mu’umu’u and aloha shirt.

Shown here in my Native Hawaiian Birds origami paper, available in Origami Paper Set 1 in my boutique.

Fold your paper in half making sure that your print is upright on vertical rectangles. Cut exactly in half. One half will be for your mu’umu’u and the other half will be your aloha shirt.

Now do the following steps with one cut half piece of origami paper.

Fold in half vertically:

Open the fold you just made and fold the top edge down in a triangle along the center crease.

Do the same on the left.

Fold the top down, creasing at the bottom edge of the diamond shape.

Unfold the crease you just made.

Open out the lower corners.

The crease you made will line up the edge of the rectangle. Fold firmly down.

Do both sides.

Fold the whole piece down flat.

Fold the back flap up to the points of the triangles like so, to get a crease.

Unfold. This fold line marks how deeply you will cut the neckline for your mu’umu’u.

Snip from the center down to the fold line.

Repeat the above steps with your other rectangle to this snip to make an Aloha shirt.

For the mu’umu’u only one more step remains:

Fold the flaps on either side of your cut to make the neckline of the mu’umu’u.

Flip the whole thing over and you have your finished Mu’umu’u!

Aloha Shirt

To proceed with the Aloha shirt on your other origami piece, do all of the steps up to the snip. Then do the following.

Fold up the bottom edge of the rectangle a thin amount that would be an appropriate collar size for your shirt.

Fold the top half down to almost meet your collar fold.

Flip it over.

Fold down the corners to make the neckline.

Fold down both sides. The bottom point of the fold should line up with the bottom edge of the sleeve. The collar tip should touch the center fold.

Lift and move the whole collar piece around to the back and fold the whole piece in half the other way.

Carefully tuck the shirt under the collar tips.

Fold open the flaps on either side of the center cut into nice lapel triangles and tuck under the upper collar.

Open up the collar carefully with your fingertip and arrange it to look like a lived in shirt :)

Finished!