3.6.3.6 Tessellation

 

3.6.3.6 Tessellation by Shuzo Fujimoto in different lighting 

Beginner Project No. 5 : 

 

Designed by Shuzo Fujimoto, 3.6.3.6 tessellation, the fifth beginner project in Eric Gjerde's book, is a semi-regular tessellation (What is tessellation?). It has repeating hexagons and triangles, hence the name 3.6.3.6. 

Reference : Eric Gjerde's book Origami Tessellations

Paper size : 8.5 inch square.

No of units : 1 sheet of paper.

Difficulty : Intermediate.

Time : I took three days (about 2-3 hours) to complete it.

I started by learning to make a single hexagon twist, which is not so difficult.

Front view

Back View

The final model: combination of triangular twist and hexagonal twist. I didn't mark crease pattern for this. It's easier to figure out with crease patterns (CP) marked. Nevertheless I didn't have trouble identifying the positions of the hexagons and triangle twists. I just followed the instructions in the book.  Marking crease pattern before folding helps a lot, which I felt I should have marked beforehand. But not difficult to identify even without the CP.

Front View

Back View

A mistake I did is below. After making central hexagon and six triangle twists surrounding it, the next layer was creating two hexagons above and two below the central hexagon. After twisting one hexagon above or below (example : hexagon 1), do not create another one by it's side (example : hexagon 2). This will not allow to create a triangular twist in between them. The pattern gets locked and cannot proceed further. I took hours to figure out this and unfolded the hexagon 2 to create a triangle twist in between them and then created hexagon 2. 

Follow this throughout.

In the figure, two of the hexagon twists has a small pin hole. That's because of the above mistake I did. The two hexagons did not get twisted perfectly and hence there are wrinkles in paper in one or two places.