It all started one quiet Saturday morning in January, when Tobin Sudo ,9, and his sister Mie started folding paper boats for fun. When their father saw that they had folded an impressive pile of 400-plus 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 took place on May 30 at Horace Mann Elementary school as part of the annual Art Night Festival, coordinated by chair Annie Savage. Tobin and his family only had about three hours to set up 20,000-plus 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 May 30 was 23,689.