Almighty Bean

Tessellations — a word not often used, but found everywhere.  You see it more often than you think.  You’re not alone, I just learned the word this year.  Have you noticed the continuing pattern of squares or rectangles on a cobblestone pathway?  How about the intersecting lines that make shapes on a plaid skirt?  What about the weave on a bamboo mat?  Those are all tessellations - an arrangement of shapes that cover a plain.  There is probably a better definition out there for it, but I don’t want to get to mathematical.  Once you see my pictures, you’ll know what I mean.

I discovered tessellations from the instructional videos of Sara Adams, the creator of the origami website, Happy Folding.  Through her delicately executed way of teaching, she opened up a new side of origami for me.  She introduced designs by many origami artists and taught a lot of basic techniques through her videos.  Being new to tessellations, I haven’t made my own patterns and I admit that I have not made a lot.  Let me show you some of my current work.

Andrea's Rose by J.C. Nolan

This was the first tessellation that I attempted to do.  To be honest, I messed up a few times before I understood it.  I always ended up tearing something, which made me toss it and charge it to experience.  I had to do a lot of paper wrestling back then.  Now I can safely say that I can do this model with 8 tiers on 6 by 6 inch paper with ease.  Practice, practice, practice

clover folding by Shuzo Fujimoto

Clover folding, like all tessellations, require accuracy and precision.  Most of the time a preliminary grid is made so that collapsing the model is easy, and to do so, precreasing must be done.  It is essential that you know what folds must be mountain folds and what must be valley folds.  Precreasing is probably the most discouraging part of making tessellations for me.  If you don’t like precreasing, you won’t like tessellations.  But like any work or project, preparation is key.

clover folding by shuzo fujimoto

Once you have practiced doing so in a small piece of paper with a large grid, you can challenge yourself and work on a larger piece of paper.  That’s when tessellations really come to life.

hydrangea

Tessellations are really everywhere.  You don’t just find them in manmade structures.  You can find them in nature as well.  Hydrangea flowers are known for their many petals and like in this model, they are seen neatly stacked and positioned.

waterbomb tessellation by eric gjerde

Recently, Ms. Sara Adams gave her many subscribers a chance to pick a model for her next instructional video by holding a contest.  Fortunately, I won!  I couldn’t believe it myself.  Anyway, this is the model that I chose — Waterbomb tessellation by Eric Gjerde.  You can find the video here.  It turned out to be easier than I thought.  The hardest part about making this project is folding the diagonal creases.  Instead of the usual fold that goes straight from one edge to the other, I had to make diagonals on just 2 squares and then skip.  If I cheat and just place diagonals all over, I knew that it was going to be a pain to fold and it won’t look as neat.

waterbomb --smaller grid

When I got the hang of making the model, I decided to make a smaller grid so that more squares would come out.  I decided to use yellow and orange paper because Sara mentioned that the model looks like exploded cheese ^_^ Using this color, I can now see what she means

waterbomb challenge

And for my final challenge, I used large thick paper (12×12 inch).  It was extremely difficult for me to fold the center part of the model, and the collapsing part was a challenge as well.  I actually did this model while watching TV and while listening to lectures.  The end result was amazing.

If you like what you see in the front, you’ll love the pattern in the back as well.

If you want to get a feel of what the world of origami tessellations is like, you can find a lot of pictures in Flickr.  You’ll soon realize that my projects are NOTHING compared to what’s out there.  I am a really a beginner.  But hey, we all start small don’t we?