patterns unlocked

I have been wanting to use this pattern for a long time but I haven't been able to figure out how the pattern works. On Wednesday I came across a picture on the website for The Prince's School of Traditional Arts. Which gave me a starting point for figuring the pattern out. This was my first attempt after looking at the picture.

It was not a great attempt, but after looking at it more closely I was able to replicate the first piece of the tessellation (is there a term for that?).

After making the beginning of the pattern I had a hard time figuring out how to make it tessellate, short of cutting it out and using a pattern. There's a lot of extra lines and circles in the picture above from failed attempts.

After more trial and error I seemed to be on the right track, except that my page was too small.

On the bigger sheet I was able to make the pattern work! In this post it doesn't seem so exciting but it's been very exciting for me to finally have figured this out.

Tip: patterns like this have a lot riding on accuracy and so I use the attachment on my compass that lets me use a mechanical pencil so that the lines are small and accurate.

Let me know if you'd like more info on how to draw this pattern.