Tips for Tangling Fassett

Lynn Mead's new tangle pattern FASSETT continues to captivate me.  

I used it in last week's challenge and taught it to a large class this past weekend. 

There is one fine point about tangling this intriguing pattern that keeps cropping up when people first use it - namely, why a 'star' or 'flower' effect is achieved when drawing the tangle and at other times it seems to go askew.

Let's take a look...

Here are the first basic steps for Fassett:

Adele Bruno, CZT

Note that the pattern begins with a triangle.  Each additional triangle shares a line and two points with the one before.
The key to this step out is that lines of neighboring triangles intersect at the same points.  
In the above example, five lines intersect at each of the two middle points -very much like five pointed stars.  When the finished lines are drawn from the center of each aura-ed triangle, the end result looks like this -

Now, if we drew Fassett and began with the same simple triangle, but drew additional ones that intersected lines as well as points - it would look something like this:

Fassett Step Out,   Adele Bruno, CZT

Note the red arrow.   The triangle below the arrow intersects the bottom line of the triangle above it, not at a point.

The step out continues in the same fashion - aura each triangle - but when the lines are drawn from the center of each of these triangles, the result is slightly different:

You can see where the 'star' effect is achieved when the triangles intersect at the same point as well as the really interesting effect that occurs when the triangles intersect at lines.

Now that you can detect the differences- just for fun, go back and look over the tiles from this week's challenge.  (click here to view)  You'll be able to see where the pattern was drawn in the two different variations.

Keep tangling!  Enjoy!