This is an original tessellation that is somewhat atypical in that some of the folds land squarely on top of each other. It's a little hard ot do, but it is possible.  Why do it? Because it can be done.  The actual architecture is very simple. If you look at the crease pattern below you'll understand what I mean. All the intersections are very straightforward. However, gettting everything to work together nicely is a little bit of a conundrum.  After you have it all flattened, then there's the additional task of arranging the folds in some sort of coheerent pattern. That's the real trick to this one. Try it. You'll see. It's fun though, to fiddle around with all the possibilities. There's no right answer. It's just a matter of how you want it to finish.  It's probably a difficult level tessellation . You just have to be delicate with it. It'll take some finesse.  I think this is my crease pattern. It's a little wrinkled. I may have altered t...

 This tessellation is a sort of  a semi-original . The center point is something I saw on the Insta feed of Arseniy K. But I then took the rest of the tessellation in my own direction.  When I first saw his tessellation , I was struck by how creative his central idea was. It just made me want to use that as a jumping off point.  This is the result.  The idea of his that I loved so much is rhombuses around an open back hexagon. But instead of twisting off the axes of the hexagon, the rhombus are situated right up against it. With this setup you can tuck half of each rhombus kind of under itself to create the central pattern.  It's a finnicky design with lots of overlaps and tricky intersections.  Even after I mapped it out on some grid paper, I still needed to do a first fold using basic paper just to get a better understanding of how the folds would all work together.  It was only then that I moved on to the fancy paper and executed the fi...

 I haven't solved someone else's tessellation  in quite a while. This time around I did. This is Orbits designed by gatheringfolds.  I surprised myself with how quickly I was able to reverse engineer it. It was no trouble at all.  True to her classic form this is a symetrical design that is a mirror image on either side. Knowing her tendency toward such ideas made it easier to figure.  The main components are small offeset hexes with triangle twists alternating front and back and open back hexagons.  It was a pleasant fold that I did with regular printer paper. I even did it on a rainy day and still didn't have any trouble. Loosely spaced twist folds such as this are perfect for when the paper might be a little soggy because of the weather.  There's no need for a pic of the reverse side since it's the same just mirrored.  Depending on your skill level this might be an easy tessellation or it might be an intermediate one. Objectively, I've say i...

 If you're a fan of flagstone tessellations , as I am, here's another one. This one is trapezoids and rhombuses in a linear pattern.  Trapezoids have all kinds of fun linear possibilities to ferret out. This is just one of so many, many possibilities. I could probably spend years just creating trapezoid based tessellations and not ever run out of options.  This original tessellation is two trapezoids. One up and one down, then a rhombus. And repeat.  Triangle twists densely populate the back side.  This is a difficult tessellation . All flagstones are at least somewhat difficult. They are also a lot of fun and very satisfying to complete. Yielding fascinating finished results.  Crease pattern included.  Filed under: February 2025 Origami

  This is a twist based tessellation that uses some basic triangle twists to create a pretty intriguing pattern on the opposite side of the paper.  A large hexagon is converted into the six triangle twists at the center. Then I add duos of triangles twists off of the axes. At that stage the pattern is repeated.  The twist side is fiddly to work. I used basic printer paper, which is usually great for simple twist designs such as this one. However, in this case, the proximity of some of the folds would've benefited from a slightly sturdier stock.  The good news is that the other side (first photo) turned out very nice. Some tessellations can be a little bipolar like that. Where one side is not that great, while the other is perfectly fine.  I actually conceived of this design as the second photo. Wanting to create a series of triangle twists with wings that created inner negative space triangles. That was how I envisioned the finished result. I still think it...

 This is a relatively simple tessellation that I recently created. The idea is six sided pyramids with rhombuses twisting off of all of the corners.  Three are close together and connected by small natural triangles. Three are further apart and are connected by larger natural triangles.  Finding a coherent  pattern in a tessellation such as this one can be daunting. All the folds can go in any direction.  So, while it's pretty easy to just fold everything haphazardly, it's a little more of a challenge to come up with and execute a consisent pattern.  But, there are no rules. It can be folded in any way you want. 

  This is an intermediate level tessellation that I recently created and folded. It uses small hexagons with rhombuses offset from them. Then it also adds open back hexagons as well. The pattern of the rhombuses around the open back hexagons is set by how they rotate around the small hexes.  I conceived of this original tessellation from the other side (second photo), but I think that I like the first photo a little more.  When I was first starting out and looking at my diagram, I thought it would be pretty hard. Turned out, not so much. I didn't have much trouble at all.  It was somewhat time-consuming, but otherwisee, a pretty pleasant tessellation to fold.  My crease pattern is included below.  Filed under: February 2025 Origami Tessellations