Origami Tessellation: Chances Taken

 Here is the tessellation that I referenced in an earlier post called 'Alternate Realities'. In that post I explained how I had mapped out a certain design, but when I went to fold it, I sort of lost track of the pattern. I wound up folding a slightly different tessellation by improvisation.. That was the 'Alternate Realities' tessellation. 

This tessellation is the original idea folded to completion. It's similar, but different. 

It has the same starting point of teardrop shapes pointing outward from an open back hexagon. It diverges from there. Where I add small hex twists on the back to create a triad of the teardrops. At that point, I am able to repeat the central pattern. 

It doesn't fit entirely on my 32 pleat grid, but if you had a larger grid you could fully repeat the center and keep repeating as long as the size your grid would allow. 

It's an intermediate level origami tessellation. If you follow the crease pattern included below, it's not too taxing to execute. 

The most important lesson to take away from this design is that whenever you have points such as those shown in these teardrop shapes, you can always repeat them by adding a small hex twist on the reverse side that is one small natural triangle away from the point. 

It's an important principle to understand when attempting to create your own origami tessellations.