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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March 17, 2023 | 
More like this: 
Thank you for showing us the patterns on the rug, they are all so lovely together. Just want to let you know drawing 3 hexagons points touching top and bottom and two on each side creates the same pattern of the star. I believe that is how the pattern came into being in quilting. Stadtler makes a template of circles, squares triangles and hexigons professional master sketch template #977/135 They are also fun to work with in making patterns and they help with learning spacing and muscle memory. I like using them as a string. they call the pattern Hexagons revealing the star in quilting.
Dear Maxine, thank you for your comment and the Stadler template advise. It is true that these stars are formed by drawing hexagons as you describes, I don’t know much about that but the so-called “sacred geometry” is full of these shapes.
But precisely the challenge for me is to make them appear without the need for rules or templates. I hope you can have fun this way too
I totally agree with you Carmen. This is exactly what Zentangle is all about – no mechanical aids. Just enjoying the process with our pens and paper and appreciating what “appears without the need for rules or templates”.
I’m really enjoying how much complexity can be built using such a seemingly simple tangle <3 Straight lines, wonky lines, adding in fill and fragments – it’s endless the possibilities! Thank you!!
Beautiful pattern with a lot of possibilities! Thank you for sharing
An intelligent and original deconstruction for a classic pattern. Great job
Once again, one with so many possibilities. Thank you for sharing it. I’m sure I will be using it.
Beautiful! This and Daviso share similar strokes! https://tanglepatterns.com/2015/07/how-to-draw-daviso.html