9 Year Old Washington Resident, Tobin Sudo, Sets a New World Record!

It all started one quiet Saturday morning on January 2014, where Tobin and his sister Mie started folding paper boats for fun.  When their father saw that they had folded an impressive pile of 400+ boats, he looked up the Guinness World Record for origami boats and found that, at the time, it was a little over 4,000 boats.  He said under his breath, "Oh, that looks doable."  Tobin overheard this and that's how it all started.

 

The world record attempt was made on 5/30/2014 in Horace Mann Elementary school as part of the annual Art Night Festival, coordinated by Annie Savage (Art Night Chair).  Tobin and his family only had about 3 hours to set up 20,000+ origami boats in the school library, before the Guinness approved counters, Jane Wither (Redmond Arts and Culture Commission) and Jordan Swain (Redmond High School Art Teacher) showed up.  The task seemed impossible, but the school community pitched in to help.  In fact, with the teachers' and students' help, setup completed early so some of them even started to fold additional origami boats to add to the count!

 

Prior to the attempt, the world record for "Largest Display of Origami Boats" was 16,343.  The confirmed origami boat count on 5/30/2014 by Tobin Sudo was 23,689!

 

Tobin and his family would like to give special thanks to Annie Savage, Principal Megan Spaulding, Jane Wither, Jordan Swain, Horace Mann’s PTSA and the school community for making this once in a life time event possible.