The Process of Making an Origami Tessellation

A tessellation is any infinitely repeating pattern that goes on forever, and that is possible to do in origami as well.

-A large enough sized piece of paper

-Your hands : )

In the next step I will show you how that making a larger grid, will make a more detailed or larger tessellation. : )

1) The Star Puff Tessellation designed by Ralf Conrad, on a 32x32x32 triangle grid on a Hexagon shaped paper to begin with.

2) The Star Puff Tessellation designed by Ralf Conrad, on a 64x64x64 triangle grid on a Hexagon shaped paper to begin with.

There are two types of grids, a square grid, and a triangle grid, square grids usually pop up in human figures of origami, but sometimes on tessellation. On the other hand triangle grids usually pop up in tessellation s but you sometimes see them elsewhere.

These are both the same tessellation except for that on of them is on a 32 grid (Smaller one), and the other one is on a 64 grid (Bigger one). By doing this, you get a bigger tessellation or a more zoomed out one that shows another row or ring of the star puffs. This is just a really long way of saying that if you make a bigger grid in dividing, you get a bigger/more zoomed out tessellation.

I’m making the Square Interlace tessellation designed by Michel Kosmulski All origami tessellation require a grid, we make one in this step. We will collapse it in the next step.

The yellow paper is just making a one by one unit tessellation on a 8x8 grid, the final tessellation will be a 10x10 unit one from a 60x60 square grid.

1) The pre-creasing complete

2) Do a Square twist on the middle square

3) What the back looks like when the square twist is done

4) Start bringing the edges inward along the existing creases

5) Flatten

6) Make an inside reverse fold in the way shown

7) Do it on the other 3 corners, and your done

I always like to start with a test fold which is what you see here, it helps me figure out the tessellation, and helps me know if I can even do it or not.

Once you have completed this test fold you are most likely ready to scale it up, you need a very large sheet of paper (Mine was ~96cm or just over 3 feet) for a 10x10 array of these units you would need at least a 60x60 grid to do it. If you don’t what to divide into 15ths you can make a 64x64 grid and cut 4 units off two of the edges.

This is my completed tessellation, if you have been able to complete this, that is a huge accomplishment, tessellation psi take a huge amount of plaice cue and skill to stick with through the repetitiveness of them. In my opinion, tessellations are especially rewarding because of how easily the viewer can get lost in them.