Octagonal Stellation, step 2 Originally uploaded by EricGjerde. Taking my folding the next step towards full stellation tessellations, in the islamic art tradition. I’ve been doing a lot of studying of islamic art, particularly the geometry used in tiling and calligraphic design. There’s a lot to learn and absorb, but it’s really opening some new doors for me mentally as well as challenging my folding ability. This fold is the first version where I’m reasonably happy with the enclosing folds around the stellation; ideally in a larger design they would continue onwards and link with other “blocks” that are similar to this same star motif, but that’s a project for another day (and a MUCH larger sheet of paper than this 15cm sheet!) some of the folds here are far from perfect- I learned (in retrospect, of course) that some of the layout needs to be done beforehand rather than during the folding process itself. here’s the reverse:

Saw this on crib candy. “it design” has this folding cardboard futon platform- I can’t say how comfortable it is, but the idea is very slick. I love things with pleats, recyclable materials, and innovative shaping/packaging… http://www.tarabox.com/eng/bett_1.html

MODULOS EN EL PLANO 2 Originally uploaded by luloto1eso. I came across these beautiful photos this morning, by a new (to me!) origami folder on Flickr, luloto1eso. They are made up of modular units, but they are really beautiful tessellations- some of which would be impossible to fold from a single sheet of paper. I encourage you to check them out, as well as the many impressive modular origami items on their photostream. These are all really worth looking at in their full size- it won’t disappoint you, I promise! -Eric

light of tesselation Originally uploaded by bigk2356. New photos in the Origami Tessellations photo pool on flickr! These are from relative flickr newcomer (but long-time commentator on this blog) Kevin! This is one of my favorite tessellation patterns, which he has discovered himself and folded in a new way- I like his layout of the pleats! The backlit photos are great, but it also looks quite good from the top with normal lighting- the flaps look like overlapping leaves (thanks for the good words on that, Ryan). Thanks, Kevin, for posting these to the OT group and sharing your artistic creations with us!

Hexakaidecagon 1/4 view. a study in crease assignment. Originally uploaded by EricGjerde. Folding a hexakaidecagon (16 sided shape). It creates a necessarily large central shape. I don’t have the folding chops to make this central space into something more interesting, in a Chris Palmer sort of way, but we’ll find something to do with it eventually. the changing pleats radiating outwards are kind of like mysterious tangents to an unseen circle, which necessarily makes them a little dififcult to fold. However for the time being I found a “solution” which is imperfect but really makes the folding a lot easier, overall. I’ll probably fold a larger one using this shortcut method and then apply the proper collapse technique I figured out this weekend to do it correctly, if there is such a thing. 16 sides yields several levels of tangled triangular shapes, rather than a simple array of “kites”, so there’s some fiddling that needs to be done for this to all fold properly. What you, the viewer, might not see is that some of …