Stop making snowballs in the trash
Basic Twists Bootcamp
and start having fun folding tessellations
Build From Basics
The way that I see a crease pattern is likely very different from how you've been seeing them.
For me, a crease pattern is a map of where pleats go and how they interact and repeat to form the whole tessellation.
It's not a list of line segments to be precreased and definitely not step-by-step folding instructions!
Basic Twists Bootcamp will arm you with eight foundational twists, simple tessellations to practice them, and support to get your questions answered, so that you can fold tessellations on your own from crease patterns after mastering the ten lessons presented.
From my students: How has BTB changed how you use crease patterns?
"Getting grounded in the basics helped me figure out other problems I had with reading crease patterns."
"I can read them now."
More Than Models
Folding tessellations requires you to hold the shape of the tessellation in your mind - but that doesn't mean that you need to memorize the crease pattern!
In twist-based tessellations that shape is determined by the layout and spacing of the twists.
Without understanding twists, you will not be able to summarize the crease pattern into a memorable form.
Learning to fold tessellations requires deeper knowledge that goes beyond specific instructions for specific models.
From my students: How has BTB changed your folding skills?
"It made me more sure of what I was doing and how to find the next fold."
"Twists are becoming clear."
In Reach For All Folders
If you can't replicate a tessellation you folded in a class ...
If you're constantly second-guessing while folding ...
If you have no idea where to even start ...
Basic Twists Bootcamp is for you.
I built this course to serve the needs of the folder who needs extra repetitions, extra attention, and extra encouragement.
My current students say I have the patience of a saint and it's true - I'll explain the same move 20 times if that's what it takes for everyone to understand.
From my students:
"I think this is a good opportunity to get a solid foundation in tessellations before trying other courses. The Advent of Tessellations is a good add-on to this. It helped put twists together but kept it simple enough to be able to do. I think it would be much harder to do Advent without the foundation from BTB."
Fully Supported
All ten lessons are available immediately as recordings so you can take as much time as you need on each step.
We'll have monthly office hours on the first Tuesday of the month at 4pm Eastern (NY) time to answer questions, with an option to submit questions in advance if you can't make it in person.
All live office hour sessions will be recorded and the recordings and documents will be yours forever.
My students also have private Discord channels to ask me questions and share progress with other students, including several who have gone on to design their own tessellations.
Tried and Tested
This is not my first time teaching the Basic Twists Bootcamp course, so I've made some updates to help students like you to learn more effectively - updates like upgrading the crease pattern PDFs and having recordings instead of live lessons.
This course is specifically designed around what I've seen many new tessellation folders need: a greater understanding of the basics so folding can become more natural.
While most other tessellation workshops and books focus on teaching individual patterns or abstract math, I teach twists, common twist arrangements, and how to recognize these patterns from a practical perspective so you can fold more tessellations.
These foundations are helpful whether you've been folding tessellations for a few weeks, a few months, or a few years.
From my students: Do you plan to revisit BTB lessons in the future?
"I did so recently and folded several pieces again to practice them. And it was fun to see how much progress I've made! I thought some of these were SO HARD and now I can zip right through them."
"Often... I need to work through the sequence again."
10 folding classes
Enjoy 10 recorded tessellation classes and take as much time as you need. You'll learn a new twist in each class and apply your knowledge with a tessellation. Each class will last 2-3 hours and you can download photos of the finished folds, crease patterns in both the class-specific and general grid sizes, and bonus crease patterns for each class.
Welcome video
Before you start the folding classes, I've provided an introductory video about paper types, cutting hexagons, gridding, and more!
Supportive community
Our community on Discord will allow you to share photos, ask questions, and hop on a video channel any time to hang out together - either in the browser or through the Discord app. You can get as many or as little notifications as you like and also have private conversations with other course members.
Forever access
You'll have access to all course materials forever - that includes the Discord community and all future office hours!
What Exactly Will I Learn?
You'll have lessons on each of these ten tessellations, which are the most straightforward ways to practice each of the eight twists taught in Basic Twists Bootcamp. You'll learn closed and open square twists, closed and open triangle twists, closed and open hexagon twists, closed right triangle twists, and closed rhombus twists. You'll learn the Square tiling, Equilateral Triangle tiling, Hexagons and Triangles 6-fold tiling, 8 and 4 Right Triangles tiling, Right Triangles Slope tiling, Aligned Rhombi tiling, and the Hex-Tri-Rhomb-Tri tiling.
You'll also learn that there are many possibilities available on each of these tilings and get pointers towards the simpler variations and some project planning principles on each tiling.
My Guarantee To You
If you work through all 10 folding workshops and still haven't finished a tessellation on your own, I will give you your money back and you will keep access to all course content.
Alternative Learning Methods
So far, I've just been talking about Basic Twists Bootcamp. Let's look at some alternatives.
- Piece it together from my free resources. While Tessellation Foundations and Advent of Tess and many of my YouTube videos cover the same skill range as BTB, you're not going to learn how to fold more repeats or how to read crease patterns from those resources. BTB is a much more solid foundation and eliminates the guessing of what to work on next.
- Just go to a lot of conventions. There's maybe 4 classes on tessellations at a large convention, each taught by someone different with a different technique, focused on getting one pattern folded and spending half the time precreasing. So, that comes out to 4 hours of tessellation learning but none focused on recognizing twists. Just to match the hours in my folding workshops, you'd need to go to at least 4 conventions, spending ~$6000 on all expenses and taking 2-3 years. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that with different teachers it'll be a much more confusing process and you'll forget a lot between each convention.
- Hire me for 1-on-1 tutoring. That'll take at least 25 hours at $100/hr, coming out to $2,500 and you won't even get to hear everyone else's questions and insights or come to the recurring office hours!
- Learn like I did - take Erik Demaine's Geometric Folding Algorithms class at MIT, then reverse engineer ~200 tessellations from photos. You can find the lectures online but they're not specific to tessellations and have lots of high-level jargon. Reverse engineering that many tessellations left me with no social life for a year and still not as much knowledge as I'll be teaching - a high price to pay!
Buying for a friend?
You can buy Basic Twists Bootcamp as a gift for a folding friend or family member.
Once you purchase, you'll receive a unique coupon code that they can use to get 100% off the course.
You can also get a paper pack for them and have it shipped straight to their door!
My Christmas 2024 shipping deadline for US orders is December 13th.
GIFT PURCHASEBasic Twists Bootcamp is also included in the Apprentice, Researcher, Budget, and All-Access course bundles.
And Yes, There's More!
BONUS #1
CHALLENGE CREASE PATTERNS
Each lesson comes with 1-2 challege crease patterns for you to try out the skills you just learned. These are accompanied by a written description of the challenge piece and photos of the final result.
BONUS #2
LASER CUTTING TEMPLATES
You'll get all my templates for laser cut acrylic so you can cut hexagons cleanly and frame finished pieces professionally. You'll also get step-by-step instructions on how to order cut acrylic from my favorite supplier.
So, why offer this course? Why now?
I'm seeing tons of interest in folding tessellations, but no clear path to get started. You can learn the basic twists from a number of YouTube videos (including mine), but there's no clear order to learn them or guidance on how to practice. Since twist-based tessellations are the easiest way to get started in tessellations (as opposed to corrugations, curved creases, and the precrease-and-collapse method), I saw an opportunity to show a clear path to start folding tessellations.
However, I knew that this teaching would require a huge commitment of time and effort from me. That's why I'm requiring a commitment, a financial investment, from you in order to join. This will allow me to focus on helping you as much as possible and give me the resources to make even better courses in the future.
I've been folding origami since 2004, folding tessellations since 2017, and running my own origami business, Gathering Folds, full-time since early 2020. My main focus in Gathering Folds is tessellations and how best to fold, teach, photograph, and display them. I've taught hundreds of hours of lessons specifically about origami tessellations and I'm always looking for new explanations and techniques. The expertise that I've built over years of folding and teaching has given me a unique perspective on folding tessellations - a perspective I hope to share with you!
So, Are You In?
You now have a choice - will you keep looking longingly at tessellations from the outside, or will you step up and start seeing the patterns in the folds?
Now, I want to be clear - this is not for you if you don't have the time to put in the work. The classes will take up to 6 hours each between gridding, folding, and repeating additional practice pieces.
However, for those who can invest the time, I believe that this learning experience will lead to lasting mastery of twists.
So, are you ready to make the leap?
Join Now