The Origami Forum

Hi everyone,

I'm new to Origami and am very interested in the Miura fold.

I have a standard 8.5x11" Paper, and am able to do the standard tessellation Miura just fine. But what I am interested in is having some sort of fold where it goes in increments instead of folding the entire piece at once.

For example, when I fold my 8.5x11" Miura the entire paper starts folding simultaneously. Is there such a fold where the edges start folding individually while the center stays flat until the last fold?

Think of it like a Miura fold one fold at a time - or something like that. I'm looking for both the x and y to retract/expand at the same time until it is very small, while keeping the un-completley-folded parts of the paper flat.

Complexity is no problem, I always like a challenge.

Thanks everyone

I'm going to assume that you want your tessellation to end up looking like VVVVVVV and not >>>>>>>, and you want to fold from the left and right edges into the center.

Unfortunately, probably not unless you want to make pleats running the opposite direction of your Miura folds.

This is because the miura folds shrink the dimensions of the paper. If the center would stay unchanged, it wouldn't match up with the already folded parts because the already folded parts would be shorter.

But if you were to pleat the center some how that the length of the paper would match up with the Miura part, you might be able to do what you're looking for but I'm not sure how. Perhaps somebody else would know.

Welcome to the forum!

You might look up the "flasher" design, made famous by Jeremy Shafer... It doesn't match exactly what you've described, but it is closer in that the middle stays in place while the rest of the paper collapses around it. Other than that, maybe look into box pleating, since you can collapse the box pleat one mountain/valley fold at a time while keeping the middle flat.

Hopefully this helps a little. Good luck!