Sailboats on the Ocean Origami Tessellation

Sailboats on the Ocean Origami Tessellation

 I've been meaning to post this tessellation for a while now. It's very different from my usual modus operandi. Or it looks that way at least. It actually uses fairly common shapes and techniques even though it looks like I did something crazy. 

The central shape is your typical open back hexagon. It's twisted with small natural trapezoids off of it. Then there are six sided triangle shapes to connect the next array of repetitions. 

Because of the way things are connected everything on the back kind of lands on top of each other. And with the multitude of layers it has, it is very hard to flatten. But it can be done, sort of. 

The first time that I did this origami design I used larger connecting shapes (as reflected in the crease pattern below). And I also folded over the hexagons on the back into their centers thinking the design would flatten better that way. It did, but it altered the look considerably. I didn't really like how that turned out. 

So, I decided to try with the smaller connectors and leave the hexagons normal. That's how I got what's seen above. 

The crease pattern shows both the original size connectors I used as well as the smaller size. There's the same design, just spaced differently.

Crease pattern to fold Sailboats on the Ocean Origami Tess

Filed under: February 2026 Origami Tessellations. I think I actually did it in December 2025 though. 
This has been an original post created by SolvingOrigamiTessellations.com

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