This tessellation is folded from an old crease pattern that I found in my google photos. Apparently, I had conceived of the idea, but had never executed it.  I actually found the crease pattern mistakenly associated with an entirely different tessellation than what it depicted. Weird.  Anyway, I finally folded it.  It's an interesting star pattern that I haven't seen before. It waited a long time to finally come to life and now, at long last, it has.  Crease pattern is at the bottom. 

 I have been looking back at some of the tessellations that I did several years ago. Back when the whole idea of creating my own tessellations was still a crazy, new concept.  It's certainly interesting to see how differently I thought then in terms of shapes, construction and overall concept.  In some respects, it feels like I was more creative back then. On the other hand, I feel more skilled today. More able to bring random ideas to fruition.  This tessellation is another design of my own which I had to reverse engineer because I didn't properly document it the first time. It tripped me up for a bit because I was trying to simply recreate the shapes using standard construction methods, but there's actually a secret to finishing this one. Its basis is a pretty simple design that is augmented by a series of reverse folds on the corners of the spirals. When you examine it from the back you can see better what shapes are involved.  There are the open back hexes. ...

 Way back in January 2019 I created the pattern for the tessellation in this picture. This is a refold of that.  When I first did it, I failed to save a crease pattern. As I was looking at the photo of the original I decided it would be worth folding again.  For two main reasons.  One, to have a saved crease pattern. Two, to have a nicer photograph of the completed model.  My phone back then did not have a great camera. It's a bit of a strange feeling trying to solve your own design.  On the one hand, I felt confident that if it was my mind that created it, surely that same mind could figure it out in reverse.  On the other hand, I felt worried that if I couldn't figure it out that meant I was losing my origami mojo.  Fortunately for me, my mojo remains intact for now.  Honestly, it's not a very complicated design. It's just densely spaced.  I'm a sucker for those closely nested repetitions.

 This tessellation is a modification of one by @gatheringfolds that I solved. I believe she called it Criss Crossed.  Honestly, I initially found it a little confusing. It's not ideal trying to figure out the mechanics of an origami structure from an instagram pic on your phone.  I used to share them to my email and open the images full size on a regular pc monitor, but instagram has made that a lot harder to do. It may still be possible, but I've not tried that hard.  Given that I usually do these things at work, I'm limited in how I can obtain the larger images.  So I zoom in from the app on my phone and grumble and squint and usually can make out the details required. Usually.  I mapped out how her original idea worked on some grid paper, but decided to shrink it to better fit on a 32 pleat grid.  Basically just moving everything closer together. The back side is particularly interesting to me. It makes me think of a pulley system. I like it. 

 This is a tessellation that I came up with almost exactly 3 years ago. Fiddling around, I came up with it all over again. That happens to me a lot. Time goes by and I forget them and wind up unknowingly repeating myself.  It's all good though. It's a chance to fold it better. To photograph it better. To document it better.  It's larger offset hexagons on the one side and triads of rhombus twists on the other side.  I particularly like how the rhombus twists create ribbons that flow to the corners of the hexagons.  It's a pretty easy tessellation to execute. Nothing tricky about it. Any old paper will work.  Crease pattern included below.  It's a bit messy, but just the red lines apply.  It's not indicated in the crease pattern, but you do need triangle twists at the triple intersections of the rhombuses. They land on the reverse side. 

This is just a flash idea I had. There was no planning involved. No inspiration. I just started folding and followed the lure of the creases in the paper.  Upon seeing the finished result, It kind of reminds me of Robin Scholz's Triphilia tessellation, but the construction is definitely different and I was not thinking of that as I was crafting it. The similarity is that you can arrange the layering of the triangles into different patterns of your choice.  I went looking and discovered  I had folded this a few years ago and called it Triangle Temptations . I didn't realize this until after I'd completed this model.  Apparently, according to my original post, I'd seen someone else fold it on flickr and recreated it.  This happens sometimes. You hit on an idea and it's something you've done and forgotten. They linger in the back of your brain and come forward unexpectedly.  That previous version differed from this one slightly, in that it used double sized cr...

 Recursive origami used to be something that I did on a regular basis. Long before I discovered origami tessellations, recursive origami was what I did.  Recursive origami is similar to tessellations in that they're both a repeating pattern that can, in theory, go on infinitely. But while tessellations repeat along the x and y axes, recursive designs repeat along the z axis.  Shuzo Fujimoto was a famous recursive origami designer. Some of his most famous creations are the clover and the hydrangea.  Some origamists even took it a step further with what are known as high density recursive designs. Repeating the single layered model multiple times on a single sheet of paper.  For some reason that I don't understand the technique for folding the hydrangea has stayed firmly planted in my brain. Even years later, I still remember all the steps.  I also remember that it can be done at higher densities. I first encountered this idea at a website called. origamituto...

 The tessellation that I folded prior to this one is what gave me the idea for this. I just kind of flipped things around and worked out how it would all fit together.  It took a lot triangles to construct. A. Lot. Of. Triangles.  Flagstone tessellations are generally very triangle intensive. This design is no exception.  The layout feels very familiar, but I searched and searched to see if I'd done it before based on someone else's idea and I couldn't find anything.  It's open back hexagons surrounded by trapezoids. That central idea repeats. There are some top-side triangles in order to make it a flat fold.  It's not the best time of year for folding flagstone tessellations. It's hot and humid. But inspiration is impatient. There are many triangles required on the reverse side. I knew there would be triangles needed on the back side, but I didn't anticipate needing quite so many of them during my initial conception of it.  But no worries, they were n...

 When I first started folding flagstone origami tessellation I did so using crease patterns generously offered to the internet by their respective creators. Peter Keller and Robin Scholz were the primary designers whose creations I folded.  In the beginning, it seemed so mystifying. How they'd arrive at the structure. How to execute the structure.  But it didn't take too long to understand how it worked and how to solve them and sometimes even create them.  In this case, I solved one. I saw a post by @kerstin.origami on instagram. She had folded a flagstone by @valleyfolder (Peter Keller). I liked it enough to give it a try.  The thing about flagstones is that once you understand the architecture, they're actually very easy to solve.  All the shapes are easily visible and how to connect them is a very straight forward process. Flagstones, are however, very labor intensive to actually fold. There are a lot of creases and there is a lot of coaxing involved....

 It was about time I tried to solve  someone else's tessellation again. So I saw a really interesting one by gatheringfolds on instagram. It's half hexagon and triangle twists. The front and back are mirror images of each other.  She named it Woven Strips.  The linear design style felt fresh and new.  It's a pretty easy to execute configuration. Nicely spaced. But this particular layout is something I really haven't come across before.  I especially  like how there are those step like parallelograms. They are the result of folding the mirror half hexagons (or trapezoids) on the other side.  20 lb copy paper was perfect for this. 

Came up with this configuration just screwing around with rhombus twists. When I first started mapping it out, I wasn't sure exactly where I could go with it, but I was sure I could take it somewhere meaningful. A little more fiddling later and the pattern coalesced.  It's rhombus twists around a hexagon, but they are a little different in that they overlap one another. Thus creating a different repeating pattern.  In order to flatly repeat the central idea, some triangle twists were necessary. From there, it was the simple matter of execution.  It was only mildly tricky to fold.  Thin paper worked just fine. 

I posted a tessellation a little while back that I called Hexagon Kisses Tessellation . It was a variation on a design by Arseniy K. This is a new variation on that idea. It compactifies the structure for a different finished product.  I've always been partial to denser designs for some reason. So that inspired this modification.  It's actually an idea I had a while back (before I'd encountered his) that for reasons I no longer recall, never came to fruition.  This time around it worked out just fine. It came together rather quickly and without much fuss at all.  The idea is simply hexagons with rectangles. To make the collapse work there are double width triangles. The corners of the hexagons fold over onto the points of the triangles.  I used 28 lb. paper. 

 This tessellation is what I call a natural one. Meaning there are no extra creases. Just those of the triangle grid itself. There are many interesting shapes and arrangements to be found even without cross creasing.  This kind of tessellation is a little less challenging. Once you fold the grid there are no additional creases required. The paper is also a little more receptive to being collapsed because of this.  When I conceived of this design I originally envisioned the second pic as the front of the design.  However, when I took the photos, I decided the other side would be the front.  The original inspiration was to have those wings off the central hexes create angular star shapes. But when I saw the other side of the design I thought it was much more intriguing.  Both sides are interesting in their own right.  I used pretty thin paper. 20 lb. copy paper. It worked out fine. 

 This tessellation builds off of my previous 'Collapsing Daisies' design. Where 'Collapsing Daisies' was just straight repetitions of elongated rhombus shapes, this one throws some straight edges and triangles into the mix.  It's a concept I came up with for flat folding shapes that don't naturally flat fold using classic twist techniques.  The collapse is dense and not easy to execute, but it offers the ability to do flat folds with shapes that you otherwise could not.  Crease pattern follows. 

 When I'm stuck for a new idea of my own, I'll usually just try to figure out how to fold someone else's. In this case I went with another one by Madonna Yoder @gatheringfolds.  Her designs are both beautiful and accessible. They provide some challenge, but not so much as to be frustrating.  I think she called this one shrinking violets. A pretty cool title for sure.  The concept of small hexagons on one side and larger open back hexagons on the other side is an intriguing one.  I kind thought of the same idea on my own, but never got to the point of creation.  Laziness prevailed, and instead, I just reverse engineered hers.  It's a lot easier to figure out someone else's finished idea than it is to fully realize your own concept.  On the plus side, I have found, that figuring out other origami designer's models provides inspiration for new ideas.  But for the time being, I have folded hers.  We'll have to see what comes next.