Tumbling Block Paper
Hexagons split into three rhombi and tiled edge to edge, so the page reads as stacked cubes, a quilting classic since the 1850s.
Hexagons split into three rhombi and tiled edge to edge, so the page reads as stacked cubes, a quilting classic since the 1850s.
Choose Tumbling Block Paper from the list. It opens with the usual size already set.
Pick the paper size, the grid and the orientation. Customize holds colours, margins and more.
Download the ready PDF, or print straight from the page at 100% scale.
The rhombille tiling is the only way to fill a plane with identical 60° rhombi three at a time. Shade the three faces of each hexagon differently and it becomes a stack of cubes lit from one side. Shade them another way and the cubes flip — the same drawing, seen from above or below, and your eye will swap between the two while you look at it.
It is the same lattice as isometric paper, which is why it works for three-dimensional sketching as well as for pattern: each rhombus is one face of an isometric cube.
Three colours is all it takes to turn the grid into the illusion.
Every sheet here is free, adjustable and prints at exact scale.
The same underlying lattice, drawn differently. Isometric paper gives you the triangles; tumbling block gives you the rhombi already grouped into cubes.
Match the block size to your finished rhombus. Most English paper-pieced tumbling blocks use a 1 to 1.5 inch side, so 25 to 40 mm.
Because the drawing is genuinely ambiguous — nothing in it says which faces are on top. It is the same effect as the Necker cube, and shading three faces consistently is what settles it.
