How to Fold Your First Tessellation

Simplest Block

You may think that folding your first tessellation on a square grid would be easier, but triangle grids allow you to have 3 pleats coming together instead of 4 - plus they lay down flat without adding any extra creases!

Managing many pleats at once is one of the harder things about tessellations, but using these three-way intersections one at a time lets us minimize the difficulty and focus on the steps.

These three-way intersections can be put together in a huge variety of ways, from rotational to mirrored to combinations of both.

In this video I focus on a mirrored approach that's rearrangeable once you're done.

Learn More

For a deeper dive into starting with tessellations and many more options for folding with only grid lines, join me in Tessellation Foundations!

The three-way intersection I taught in this video has multiple identical ways to lay down the pleats, but you know what has many different ways to lay down the pleats? 3-way intersections on 45 degree grids.

I show you all of these intersections inside of Tessellation Foundations - check it out!

Next Steps

My next two videos will focus on crease patterns - reading them, then folding from them.

The key steps in reading crease patterns are recognizing the pieces and seeing the structure behind them.

I introduced one piece today - the three-way intersection on triangle grid - and one structure - loops of six triangle-shaped things - and I'll take you on a tour through many more next week.

Happy folding,

Madonna