This is an unusual flagstone pattern which I believe belongs to Robin Scholz. I had saved the crease pattern a long while ago and finally decided to fold it I've folded my share of flagstones. I've even designed a few. This one is certainly different. Even if you're familiar with the technique, this one will present a bit of a learning curve. Its unusual teardrop shapes require a great deal of prefolds. There's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes to make everything work. His original crease pattern still lives on flickr It's a nice departure from typical tessellations both regular and the flaggie sort. I've seen and folded the teardrop shape before. Not in this way though. Definitely gets you to thinking about other shapes which may be possible.

A variation on something I've done before. Yet it produces a very different end result. Large hexes, squares and triangles. A trifecta of tessellation happiness. I find it to be a pleasing 'braided' design. That's how it looks to me. The squares land naturally off of the wings of the triangle twists. As you follow the repeating pattern the hexes form naturally. This can be done with small offset hexes and rectangles. It's the same, but different. You could also start with hexes at the center and repeat the pattern from there.

This is an idea I had that is excellent on paper. My execution of it, however, was less than stellar. Probably on a second try it would come out more spectacular. I really like the pattern and the concept. But I struggled to understand folding it even though the architecture of it was my own concept. I like how the back turned out. During the planning, I didn't really see the extra folds that would land on the rear, so that hampered my efforts to some degree. On the front, everything needs to twist in a kind of symbiotic relationship. While I'm familiar with flagstones and other folds that are executed as a whole rather than in stages, this particular pattern proved difficult. Most likely because it was somewhat different from any I'd done before. It has similarities to other designs and techniques, but it proved to be unique in many ways. A more gifted folder might have produced a cleaner end result. Still I'm pleased with the pattern I dreamed up. I...

I saw this one on flickr. I don't know the original designer to credit. I thought it might be fun to fold. Turned out to be a little more difficult than I had anticipated. It was terribly difficult to put together. Still, once I started, I was determined to complete it. There are some open back hexes. They've got rhombuses off of them. Those rhombuses are tethered to triangles. Interesting part is the triangles are natural to the grid. Which isn't typical . The rhombuses land in triads off of those triangles. Nothing really works on its own. Everything depends on everything else. It's a whole lot of getting folds to sort of stay while you get the rest of the folds to also sort of stay as you work your way out from the center. It looks and fold like a flagstone, but it's not a true flagstone. You might call it a flagstone variation. There are a lot of similarities. When everything is kind of willing you start again moving everything into place tog...

This origami tessellation just sort of worked itself out more than I did. I was playing around with pyramid shapes and somehow landed on this. I was just drawing a lot of triangles on the gird and this pattern  naturally coalesced. It's a pretty easy fold. Nothing daunting. There is a lot of pre-creasing. That makes it easier to get everything into its proper place. The end result is pretty cool. . Bigger triangles on one side. Small ones on the other. The bigger triangles are not two pleats wide. They are that wonky size in between the bigger and the smaller. It's a pretty typical triangle twist in flagstones. It's easier to see in the unlit version below. These crease pattern is just start with a small twist at center and then the bigger twists and the small twists alternating off of each other. It's simple, but it's intricate.

I was playing around with a triad of rhombuses off of a triangle twist. From there I just followed the trail the paper left for me. So there is a single small triangle twist dead center. Three rhombus twists come off of that. Then just repeat. As you form the repetitions some oddly offset hexagons naturally form. It reminds me of the triangle twist rings that are the bedrock of flagstone tessellations. Just another interesting variation on so many classic techniques.

This is one of those semi-accidental creations that have become my modus operandi. I began with a clear intent. That was the broad petal shapes that flank the center. I did not anticipate the triangles around the center hex. I guess that I should have.  I should know better by now. I'm fascinated by that small star that the grid can create. It folds the small hex like an open back hex rather than a traditional small hex twist. I guess you'd call it an offset small hex twist. This alters shapes and the way other folds can radiate from it. The bigger triangles on the back became obvious once the repetitions fell into place. I always expect some reverse side triangles in all my tesses. They're the mortar that makes everything else come together. Sometimes I see where they belong from the outset. Sometimes they just show themselves as I'm working out the other folds. If you listen, the paper tells you where it wants to go.

I saw a close up of this on flickr. It basically showed only the center. It's a Lydia Diard design if I remember correctly. Because it was a close in photo, the rest I improvised. It might be the same as the original or it might not. I don't know. When I first saw the design I was thinking it would look nice as repeating stars. It probably would. But once I'd done the center, it was obvious that would need a larger grid. So I changed the plan to fit the 32 pleat grid. I don't think I could do all those rabbit ears on a 48 pleat grid. Not without larger paper. Personally, I hate rabbit ear sink folds. They are a great way to make cool looking points in tessellations, but I find them incredibly tedious to fold. They're not so much difficult, as they are just annoying. That's how I feel about them anyway. I'm sure others feel differently. Give me a good hex twist any day. A nice triangle twist is great too. I do enjoy a nice flagstone fold. I love...

So after I finished folding that last flagstone, it inadvertently led me to this next design. That's the thing about tessellations. If I try to come up with one, I usually get stuck. But if I'm not trying, they just kind of happen. I suppose that is the nature of art. This isn't so very different from other designs. But it does take a slightly different approach. It's open back hexes. They are flanked by rhombuses. Then there are triangle twists between the rhombuses. All of these are mountain folds. There are also some valley folded triangle twists to make everything work properly together. The unlit photo shows the true structure a little bit better. I don't have a terribly thorough sketch, but I do have a very rudimentary one. Seen below. The mountain triangle twists do not appear in the sketch. But it's fairly obvious where they occur in the gaps formed by the rhombuses and valley triangles. Just connect tthe dots.

I found this flagstone on flickr. I think it was originally designed by Joel Cooper or maybe Peter Keller. The picture I saw belonged to someone else. For a flagstone it's pretty straightforward. I'm not great with figuring out flagstones, but this one is not complicated. It's just big hexes and triangles. It actually inspired a different flagstone pattern, which I've mapped out, but haven't folded yet. If you're familiar with flagstones this will make sense to you. If not, there are many flagstone crease patterns which illustrate the underlying structure. They all share a similar architecture. Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with origami flagstones. They are pretty predictable to understand, but not very friendly to fold. Everything is kind of dependent upon everthing else. So the fold is never fully realized until all of it is pushed into place. This photo of the rear shows the triangle twist triads that comprise the design that manif...

This is another tessellation by Arseniy K as found on flickr. Mapped it out. Refolded it. His style intrigues me. It flows really nicely even though it tends to be packed in on itself. I found this pretty easy to figure out the pattern, but very tedious to actually fold. I spent a good deal of time working everything into its proper place. I've been accused of being obsessive when it comes to origami. I don't dispute it. It's necessary. In my opinion, the design looks best unlit, as seen in the first photo, but the backlit version is interesting. As seen in the second picture. I think the backlit version detracts from the complexity of the overall structure. Below I've included my sketch that I used to figure and fold the design. Use it at your own risk. Once you begin, it will become hard to stop and it will be quite difficult to complete.

I really haven't landed upon any new origami tessellations of mine own as of late. Instead, I've been having a good time finding those of others and figuring out how to fold them. It's a wonderful way to spend a few hours. This one was simple enough to figure out, but pretty difficult to execute. It's comprised of mostly fussy folds. A lot of off grid work and tight vertices. It also requires a bigger grid. Even just one repetition needs at least 19 pleats on the half. Whenever I'm trying to fold a design that won't fit on a 32 pleat grid I always go for a 48 pleat grid. It's the next easiest to fold from a hexagon. You can get thirds pretty easily and then just keep doubling. I haven't yet found a tessellation that I couldn't fit into one of these two sizes of grid. Mine don't always have as many repetitions, but I don't mind that. The end results still turn out great. Still, I wound up folding it pretty small. Even the largest hex tak...

This origami tessellation is rhombus twists off of hex collapses. You do a little hex in one direction and collapse it with the next larger hex in the opposite direction. It makes some strange triangle/pie like shapes for connecting them. They just sort of fell into place as I went along. I didn't have them mapped out before I started folding. It all flows very smoothly once you find the right creases. Some triangle twists also occur where the rhombuses converge in triads. The original and my sketch use larger triangle twists. But when I went to fold it, I used smaller ones just to fit it better on my 32 pleat grid. I've included the sketch I used to deconstruct the design. It's not a detailed crease pattern, but it certainly provides a lot of clues on how to fold it. It's another design I found on flickr in a tessellation photo pool. The first image is my fold. The second image is my sketch of the creases. The last is the original found graphic that...

This is an interpretation of a Robin Scholz single module. He may have already folded this tessellation. Or he may not have. I've seen photos of his with variations on this idea. I just decided to repeat it in a very straightforward way. This design may have been done before. It's doubtful that it hasn't already been done by numerous people. There's a small hex twist on the back. Then a ring of triangle twists around it on the front. They're a pleat out from the center. This makes it a little easier to fold initially. But when adding repetitions, it's still kinda tricky to get everything into its proper place. It's just a natural tessellation. Where each iteration blends seamlessly into the next. It was kinda tricky to fold. It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. I had imagined it would backlight differently than it actually does. It looks a lot different backlit than it does flat. I did sketch out a crease pattern, but I l...

I've been futzing around with design ideas and not really arriving at anything cohesive. This has led me to explore the folds of others. I've had some brilliant struggles with the intricate patterns of Robin Scholz. It's always very satisfying to eventually work it all out and finally achieve the finished product. I find a lot of ideas on flickr. Arseniy K is a frequent poster with interesting tessellations. His are quite different from what I'm used to folding. They are not twist based. They're more reversal oriented. His tessellation photostream This is one of his that I recreated. This is the original image I used to recreate it. I used a smaller grid. Very large grids don't work well with the paper I use. I also don't like folding really large grids. Unlike most tesses, this one looks better, I think, without backlight. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The final image shows the rear backlit. Just for illustrative purposes to...