Here's another Scholz amizade tessellation that I somehow managed to figure out. It helped having done some of his other stuff before and knowing his folding style. He really likes overlapping and reversing folds back in on themselves. Robin's amizade collection can be found on flickr . Personally, I find it difficult with the overlapping pleat folds to get going out from the center. The middle is usually fairly easy, but then executing the radiating repetitions off from that are quite the struggle. Especially since it's all rather symbiotic. Each one is connected to and dependent upon all the others in its circle. Such that you can't fully execute them one at a time. You have to gently ease them all into place as a set. You definitely need a great deal of patience. It's going to take time to work those fold into place. I didn't realize at first it was small hexes on the back. I saw the triangle twists on front and thought of the next hex up that you c...

I've been studying some of Robin Scholz's amizade tessellations. He does some really interesting patterns with triangle twists. Sometimes I see them and wonder how they didn't occur to me. He just really excels at finding the complex designs from simple folds. It's an artistry you can't learn or be taught. All you can do is marvel at it and hope to learn from it. This fold is one such design. Simple components. A difficult assembly. A remarkable result. His ideas always make me wish I had bigger paper with a larger grid. Because the more you can repeat the design the more beautiful it becomes.

This is another tessellation where I saw a photo  online and made the effort to figure out how to recreate it. I don't know the source to credit. But when I first saw the picture I thought it was brilliant in its simple elegance. I totally complicated the process of figuring out the construction. I added way more triangle twists than were necessary. Eventually I realized that I was making it harder than it actually was. There are a lot of triangle twists, but when I took a step back I realized where each belonged and how they made sense in the whole. It's an interesting composition in that it's centered around triangle twists. I usually start tesses I'm creating around hex twists and work from there. This one is all triangle based. I really like this pattern. All props to whoever originally came up with it. It's simple, but complex. Which is the true earmark of a great origami tessellation. In the photo of the rear of the tessellation you can see the ...

I've seen this tessellation many times on google, pintrest and flickr. It's originally designed by one of those famous origamists that we aspiring origamists know and admire. I just can't remember which one. I want to say Scholz or McKeever, but I'm not sure. It uses a square gird, which I'm not terribly good at using. I'm more of a triangle grid type of folder. Don't know why. But it was pretty frustration free to puzzle out how to fold this. They are pretty basic shapes. Once it occurred to me to start pushing stuff backwards and in on itself, I was well on my way. Even though it's a pretty simple design, it's a really cool result. It's also, probably a great learning tool for those interested in the structure and mechanics of square grid based origami tessellation. I've provided a crude sketch that I used to document my reverse engineering process. I sometimes get frustrated when I see people's beautiful origami tessellatio...

This tessellation came to me out of nowhere and coalesced very quickly. When I mapped out the hexes with the rectangles off of them I didn't realize how many triangle twists it would actually require. I knew it might need them, but there were just so many.  They readily formed both on the back and on the front. So many. But I had a pretty sturdy piece of paper, so I went ahead and persevered. It was not at all easy. Small hex twists, but they rotate on the bias of the grid. This is to accommodate the small rectangles that shoot off from them. For a flat tessellation triangle twists were necessary. Everywhere that three rectangles converge on the front a triangle twist forms on the back. Triangles also form on the front as you work the other shapes. The edges were a little bothersome. They don't come together as nicely as the inner portions. But it's not the sort of tessellation where you can not go all the way to edge. If you want it flat it has to go all the w...