How to draw ALFOMILA

Happy Friday and Happy St. Patrick’s Day greetings to you!

I’m sure you noticed right away that today’s Alfomila tangle has pretty much nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day – completely devoid of pretty three-petal shamrocks – but it’s a goodie nonetheless. Possibly a little bit challenging with a cool result.

Alfomila is from Spanish CZT Carmen Menchón and it’s her sixth tangle on the site. Most recently we explored her Veranistido and its curvy companion Catenarii.

Carmen writes,

Some time ago, at my mother-in-law’s house, I discovered a rug that I hadn’t noticed before… I quickly took out a pencil and paper and voila!: “Alfomila” was created!

The name comes from Alfombra (= rug) + Mila (= my mother-in-law nickname) and has an Arabic essence that suits it very well, in Spanish most of the words that begin with “al” derive from Arabic (ex: Alhambra).

So lets start drawing:

1. Start with a rectangular band or grid

2. Draw the diagonal that crosses 3 rectangles from the upper left corner (0) of the first to the lower right corner of the third (3) (I’ve put those numbers in pencil just to explain it)

3. Make diagonals parallel to this first line in alternate rectangles always from left to right

4. Rotate the tile 180° and repeat steps 3 and 4.

While working on my Alfomila example I noticed another way to tangle it (isn’t there almost always more than one). When I studied the fourth row in Carmen’s Steps below I saw that it’s basically alternating rows of X’s within the channels. This made a bit of a short-cut but I think it still does justice to Carmen’s intent. (I’m off to test some wonky grids and X’s to see what I get.)

Carmen illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Alfomila below and she shows us several ways to “Decorate with shadows, auras, lines, color, other tangles… It can be border tangle if you draw a single row of rectangles (in this case I recommend drawing double outer line). Or filler if it is done on a rectangular grid. In this case you can get the ‘stars’ to be aligned in columns or alternate, I invite you to experiment!”

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Check out the tag carmenm for more of Carmen’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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