Twisted Tessellations I - Translation

This delightful tessellation I found on an intricately decorated door has inspired a four-part series on drawing the various types of tessellations. The word "tessellation" comes from the Latin tessella, which is a small square tile of stone or glass used to make mosaics. Thus a tessellation is a tiling of a plane using geometric shapes with no overlaps or gaps. 

Original artwork by M. C. Escher. Image source. One type of tessellation is called a translation. Here, the shape is simply translated, or slid, across the plane and drawn again. And now, a fairly easy way to create translation tessellations of your own.  

Step 1 - Take a square piece of paper (this is a 2" x 2" square) and draw any sort of squiggle that you want. Thicker paper works better because we're going to be using it like a stencil later on; here I'm using colorful index cards. 

Step 2 - Cut out the squiggly bit. 

 

 Step 3 - Slide the squiggly bit down and tape it to the edge opposite the one you cut it from.  

Step 4 - Pick one of the remaining two sides and draw another squiggle. 

Step 5 - Repeat Step 3 with the second squiggly bit. 

Step 6 - Now your stencil is ready to use. Hold the shape still on a piece of paper and trace around it. 

You can now continue the pattern by sliding the whole shape up or down/left or right and lining it up with the already drawn edge and tracing again. 

This super simple method can be continued on forever and you can expand your tessellation indefinitely (or until you run out of paper, whichever comes first).