This is all in regards to the work mentioned in this post.

Jane says:

I wouldn’t do the triangular twists if I were you, it looks great this way.

I was wondering the other day about how you create your tesselations.
Melissande* designs the patterns and then create the folds that will lead to that pattern. I, on the other hand, like to mix folds (like in a chemistry lab) to see what patterns will come out of it.

Mélisande says:

The hexagon + teardrops in the center is an innovative and clever arrangement. It makes my think of this hindu dancing god with many legs and arms (can’t just now remember the name).

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean with “gear” : for me, it is the thing controlled by the handle you take in the right hand when driving a car…Surely this word has other meanings.

I hope you don’t mind me quoting you here! thank you, friends, for your commentary!

OK, to answer your questions (or try to, anyway…)

Jane: when I am thinking of things, quite often I just visualize in my head how I would want something to look. in this case, and sometimes in others, I draw it out in a little notebook or on a piece of scrap paper. I drew this one while I was sitting around in a meeting; you can see other pieces of silly drawings on it.

(click to make it larger.)

Once I had the general idea of what I wanted to fold, then I just started folding to see what would happen. for many types of intersections, I know how the paper will fold and how it will look, so many parts of it I already know- it’s just the unknown parts that are interesting, because I get to discover how to make them fold together. I usually know it can be done, so I only need to try it and see how it works to solve the problem. this is the part I enjoy the most.

Melisande: the central part actually can be made into a very nice “puffy star” shape- I like things flat, so I did not fold it this way, but it took that shape naturally until I squashed it completely flat. I had to borrow a camera today so it did not take very good photos; I’m going to wait until I fold a larger one to worry about it, though.

when I say “gear” I mean somewhat what you are thinking of- a gear, a cog, a wheel with spikes, something that belongs in machinery.

here is another doodle, to show what I mean:

(click to make larger.)

Gears interconnect with each other, and spin around- so it helps me to visualize how any particular crease intersection will flow, because I can assign directionality to the “spin” of it. this is almost like circle packing with a directional spin, I guess. it doesn’t hold true for the double-pleat folds (like Jane’s recent work), as they lack a directional bias. but yet in some ways they do, or they can be given one, so it still applies, I suppose.

it is an idea inside my head that is not well formed into a solid thought, so I’m still trying to decide how it works or IF it works as a usable concept.

but it’s one of the ways I think of things, especially if I am designing something inside my head which is complicated and I do not have paper to draw it out- then I just start assigning spinning wheels to each intersection and I can figure out where I need to fold.

that was an awfully long post! wow.