Origami Tessellations: Flock of Seagulls

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 This tessellation was a pretty ambitious undertaking. When I plotted it out on some grid paper, I knew that it would be kind of crazy, but I loved the design too much to not try. 

At the center point is an open back hexagon. From there I add three trapezoids and three triangle collapses. 

Then I add another layer of trapezoids. 

This in turn, creates the opportunity to add a whole bunch more small triangle collapses. Ten total per third edge. 

It is ridiculously difficult to get all those triangles to work together while also making them behave nicely with the repeating trapezoids. 


Obviously, it is doable, because I did it, but it's pretty tedious. 

Well worth it though, for the end result. 

I actually messed up the orientation for one of the triangles. Can you spot it?

The nice thing about folds like this one is, once you get everything collapsed, it's not hard to re-orient the directions  of some of the folds if you need to do so. 


When working with tessellations like this one, I find it helpful to take the approach that whichever way I can collapse things is fine. I can adjust them later. It saves a lot of heartache. 

Crease pattern included at the end. 



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