I was googling for new origami tessellation ideas and came across Ben Parker's snowflake design. I was going to attempt that, when a related image caught my eye. I think he called it "Hidden Treasure". It was a little more complex and really piqued my interest. Second only to coming up with my own tesses, one of my favorite past times is trying to figure out how to fold those of others. This one wasn't too difficult to determine. The front shapes were obvious. Some hexagons at the center of the 'snowflakes'. I thought at first, triangles on the back for the negative space. As I began putting it all together it became obvious that it was not triangles. It was that blunted corner triangle that follows the grid. The same shape featured in this tessellation . Those shapes land on the rear of the paper to create the negative space triangles on the front and make everything else synchronize nicely into a flat fold tessellation. It's a beautiful design. Wish I...

A lot of origami tessellations employ equilateral triangles in their design. In some they are the focal point. In others they help to bridge the gap between other shapes. This tessellation uses right triangles instead. It starts off typically with a central small hexagon. Instead of a classic hex twist, it uses an offset twist. This is how the triangles are formed. An offset hex twist is simply folding a small hex twist as you would an open back hexagonal twist. Instead of using the natural axes of the grid, you bisect them. Whichever direction the central hex goes, the next repetition goes opposite. If your grid were big enough to allow for more repetitions I imagine you would need to keep alternating. I used the mountain and valley folds at the ends of the triangles to determine which way the second generation would flow. There are some additional offset folds to make everything play nicely together. But nothing very complicated. All in all, it was not a difficult f...

 This is a classic weave pattern. Open back hexes and small triangle twists are just one pleat apart. This results in the woven pattern on the other side. I think I've tried to do this before. It seems familiar. But I couldn't find any pictures of such a tessellation in my personal archive. I suspect I may have attempted it and failed before. On this occasion, I was able to complete the project. It's a fairly simple pattern, but because everything is so close together it's a little tricky to execute. You can see from the crease pattern pictured further down that the triangles are only one pleat off of the axes of the hexagons. This makes everything fit together rather tightly. There's a lot of overlap. After completing the center, it gets temperamental. You can partially fold sections, but everything is interdependent for the most part. Good preceases are a necessity.

When you google origami tessellation crease patterns something called the waterbomb flagstone tessellation comes up in the top results. It looked pretty simple, but I found it rather fussy. I really need to start working with better paper. Unlike your typical flagstone, which has triangle twists on the rear, this has little rectangles. It's a familiar pattern that still proved quite difficult. The front is offset hexagons and natural triangles. The back side is the rectangles. It feels almost like it's not meant to lay flat. But it also feels like it could flatten with a stronger paper. I didn't bother to flatten it with weights or books. All the time I spent working the folds were enough to create the intended pattern. It seemed like if I tried to make it entirely flat, it would be ruined. You can see the rectangles in the rear view. I've fiddled with rectangles and hexes before. But this was a whole new level.