Gathering Folds

I teach aspiring tessellation folders to understand the patterns so that they can fold any design!

08/15/2026

I have 19 pieces up at the Murrysville Community Library courtesy of the East Suburban Artists League for the month of August!

These pieces span my early tessellation explorations of half-adjacent patterns, my experiments in translating origami tessellations into smocked fabric, and several of my snowflake-like mini pieces.

You can see them for the rest of the month at the Murrysville library and I encourage you to keep coming back for a new exhibit there by an ESAL member every month!

08/14/2026

Phase Shift is a pretty complicated pattern with flagstone spacing, hybrid hexagon twists, pseudo-tiling breaks, and symmetry shenanigans.

Here's a list of patterns that will get you up to speed:
1. Sawtooth (Tess Starter Sequence, Tess Academy, Tess by Tiles): use closed hexagon/rhombus/triangle twists in the Hex-Rhomb-Tri-Rhomb tiling, learn to fold with pseudo-tiling breaks
2. Open Suns (Advent of Tess 2022 tutorial, Tess Garden): learn open rhombus twists, practice folding in the HRTR tiling
3. Just Rhombi (Advent of Tess 2022 tutorial, full YT tutorial, Tess Academy lesson): practice folding at high density
4. Spilled Bricks (YT tutorial, Tess Garden): learn the rectangle hybrid hexagon twist
5. Spin Cycle (Tess Garden): use hybrid hexagon twists in pseudo-tiling breaks, practice recognizing symmetry points
6. Phase Shift (Tess Garden): fold at high density with hybrid hexagon twists and unusual symmetry

I'm happy to share links to the resources that teach these patterns - which one will you fold next?
Happy 🎉🎉

08/13/2026

Phase Shift started as a blank hexagon of paper, and I had a tough choice to make with the rotated grid this time around.
Since the central symmetry position is 2-fold instead of 6-fold, there are actually three different alignments for different directions of repeats of the pattern.

I chose to average out these alignments to get a fairly balanced form and to fold all the way to the edge to get the most out of the rotated grid.

The result is a slightly squished hexagon, as if you were projecting a perfect hexagon onto a slanted surface.

08/12/2026

Phase Shift has chevron stripes of rhombus twists and strings of rhombus twists touching at the pointy corners, with weird-shaped gaps between these twists.
It reminds me of a crystal lattice with lots of shear stress, forming planes of deformation.

In this case, those gaps are actually open triangle twists and rectangle hybrid hexagon twists on the back of the paper.

Unlike most patterns in the Hex-Rhomb-Tri-Rhomb tiling, Phase Shift has a maximum of 2-fold rotational symmetry - one position in the hybrid hexagons, and three distinct positions in the three orientations of rhombus twists.
Check out the second image for the symmetry positions overlaid on the folded pattern!

08/11/2026

Phase Shift uses the same tiling as...
.. the Just Rhombi flagstone pattern.
Were you able to guess correctly? Drop a comment below!

08/10/2026

Once you know the moves to make the twists and you've learned to decipher what order to fold the twists, it's time to learn to make great borders on your patterns, get more crease patterns, and learn how to design your own tessellations.

I'll talk about my three most advanced resources for origami tessellation folders in my livestream at 10am NY time this Tuesday, and I'd love for you to join the discussion!

Do you have any questions about these resources?
Ask them in the livestream or in the comments!

The stream is scheduled on my YouTube channel, Gathering Folds, and here's the direct link: https://youtube.com/live/oe4MOSVbh5A

08/09/2026

✅ Folded from a single sheet of paper
✅ All folded in the last 3-4 months
✅ My backlog of new patterns is still full

All of the crease patterns for these 36 designs (plus 673 more) can be found in Tessellation Garden, the definitive collection of my origami tessellation designs, at https://training.gatheringfolds.com/garden 🎉🎉

08/08/2026

I just finished adding 36 new patterns to Tessellation Garden, for a total of 709 designs.

This update is mostly patterns for Advent of Tess 2026, so you'll get an early sneak peek of this year's themes if you get Tessellation Garden now.

Once you get Tessellation Garden you'll keep getting new patterns with every update, so you'll always have plenty of patterns to explore.
Head over to https://training.gatheringfolds.com/garden to get all these crease patterns for yourself! 🎉🎉

08/07/2026

The pieces in this post are one possible route to folding Butterfly Migration, and the patterns in the Advent of Tess 2025 tutorials and ebook are another (longer) route.

In fact, the last three patterns in this post are Inchworm and both of the alternate endings of Inchworm that are included in the ebook!

Here's what you'll learn with each piece:
1. Triangle Double Bar Wells (Tess Starter Sequence, Tess Academy):
2. Fairy Rings (Tess Starter Sequence, Tess By Tiles, Tess Academy, Tess Garden):
3. Lens Stars (Tess Starter Sequence, Tess Academy, Tess Garden):
4. Inchworm (AOT24 tutorial, Tess Academy, Tess Garden):
5. Swallowtail (AOT24 ebook, Tess Garden):
6. Butterfly Migration (Tess Academy, AOT24 ebook, Tess Garden):

As you can see, I have lots of resources that teach these patterns and/or have the crease patterns.
Which one would you like to fold next on this ?
I'm happy to send you a link!

08/06/2026

I started folding this sheet of paper with a hexagon, and finished with something that's clearly hexagonal but has a lot of little bumps on the edges.

This origami tessellation uses a tiling where the repeats do not line up with the tiling breaks, so I chose to align the repeats of the pattern with the edge of the paper and fold all the way to the edge.

The pattern is named Butterfly Migrations for the clusters of five overlapping rhombus twists and you can also see large stars on the back of the paper.

Sometimes it's hard to choose which side is the front - which is your favorite - the butterflies or the stars?

Address

Monroeville, PA

Website

https://training.gatheringfolds.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Gathering Folds posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Gathering Folds:

Want your business to be the top-listed Interior Service in Monroeville?