Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Exploring the Five-Color Torus: A Mathematical Journey


Exploring the Five-Color Torus: A Mathematical Journey

This summer I attended the ICERM Illustrating Mathematics Reunion/Expansion and had the pleasure of meeting Alba Málaga Sabogal from the Université de Lorraine. Alba gave a fascinating presentation on a structure called the five coloring of a torus. You can watch her talk in the ICERM video archive; at about 4:02 she begins discussing the piece.

Because I’ve long been intrigued by the torus, I was immediately drawn to this project. The model was created by undergraduate students Alix Kremer and Djatil Krichenane, under the mentorship of Alba and Samuel Lelièvre. Their work combines geometry, design, and craftsmanship into a tangible structure: five folded modules, each a different color, joined together by hinges. Alba included their work in her ICERM presentation on “Tangible Mathematics Research Internships.” The project itself grew out of two prompts: Samuel Lelièvre’s 7-colored diplotorus and Saul Stahl’s paper “The Other Map Coloring Theorem.”

The result is a pentagonal torus — a surface of genus 1 (topologically equivalent to a doughnut) with pentagonal symmetry. Instead of the familiar smooth torus generated by rotating a circle, this version is polygonal, assembled from five wedge-like modules. What makes it so elegant is that each colored region touches all the others, perfectly embodying the idea of a five-coloring in three dimensions.

At the conference, Alba wanted to build a version to show how the coloring works. She was prepared to cut it by hand, but since I had brought my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine, I offered to help produce a cleaner, more precise version.

When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the model. I decided to build one myself, this time experimenting with hinged paper tabs instead of Scotch tape. It was my first attempt at this joining method, and I quickly discovered the net could be assembled in two ways: clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on how the pieces were arranged.


That experiment sparked a new challenge for me: given that the four-color theorem guarantees any map can be colored with just four colors, I wondered if I could create a four-color torus using only four folded modules that are skewed like Alba's. The theorem shows that you need at most four colors to color any flat map so that adjacent regions—those sharing a border, not just touching at a point—have different colors. Since Francis Guthrie first proposed this concept in 1852 (earning it the alternate name "Guthrie's problem"), I was curious whether this mathematical principle could translate into a physical origami construction.



This turned out to be much trickier than expected. The geometry demanded precise control of the diagonal angles and the heights of the outer triangles. Even the slightest mismatch caused the paper to warp or wrinkle as shown in the above photos.After many trials, I settled on a two-piece approach: one piece for the central diagonal, and another for the two outer triangles. I also scaled the outer triangles to 101% to account for cardstock thickness. At exactly 100%, they were just a bit too small to close smoothly into a ring.

In the end, the process gave me a new appreciation for Alix and Djatil’s original five-color model. What began as a photograph shared at ICERM grew into an exploration of geometry, color, and structure — and left me eager to keep experimenting with new variations.

I have since tried a six color version.  Again, there is warping.  I tried to ask ChatGPT to design a program to determine the correct calculations.  This program does need further modification but it is interesting to see what AI can do with this mathematical color journey. Here is the html to run the program, Dynamic Twisting Polygon https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hJY8uP0mBRd8wXsxd0-RfgXi6y9Klyex/view?usp=sharing Click on the file and then download it.  Once downloaded, open the file to run the html code, toggle on the twisted edges and the diagonals to see the internal structure of the torus. After further investigation, the measurements are wrong!  Interesting to see that AI is not always right.  I will correct its mistake in the next blog posting. 





Here are the files for the colored torus:

The .Studio file for a four and five colored torus.

The SVG file for a four and five colored torus.

Friday, September 12, 2025

A Paper Doll Chair for the American Girl Little Bitty Baby

A Paper Doll Chair for the American Girl Little Bitty Baby

The paper doll chair is pictured on the left.  The upholstered version in the middle and right of the photo.

I am so excited to share this fun project with you today.  Your American Girl Little Bitty Baby doll is going to love having her very own perfectly-sized seat! I created the chair with TurtleStitch, a block-based programming language.

 For my papercrafting friends, no coding is necessary.  All the files for a five inch chair are included in the file resources section.

What I absolutely love about this project is how precise and versatile it is! Since our Little Bitty Baby is 5 inches tall, I designed the TurtleStitch code at a 1:1 scale, which means everything translates perfectly to real-world tiny dimensions.

I created this TurtleStitch code with a built-in scale feature that's like magic! Want to make a chair for your other dolls too? Just change that scale number and voilà! You can create perfectly sized chairs for:

  • Your full-size 18-inch American Girl dolls
  • Barbie and her friends (11.5 inches)
  • Any baby dolls you have around the house
  • Really, any doll in your collection!

Isn't that amazing? You're not just learning one project - you're getting a whole chair-making system for your doll family!

File Resources

I know not everyone wants to dive into coding right away, so I've prepared all the files you need for the Little Bitty Baby chair. Just pick what works best for you:

TurtleStitch ProjectView and modify the original code - For the adventurous souls who want to make different sized chairs.

Ready-to-Print PDFDownload PDF file - For hand cutting

Silhouette Studio FileDownload .Studio file - For your Silhouette machine.

SVG FileDownload SVG - Works with any cutting machine

Components of the Chair

This little chair has just three simple parts.

  • Chair frame: The back and sides 
  • Seat: The bottom
  • Legs: You'll cut four of these sturdy little supports

Assembly 

The legs are designed with a really smart folding trick. When you fold the sides inward, you create these diagonal creases that turn flat cardstock into strong, three-dimensional supports. It's like origami meets furniture making!

Putting It All Together (It's Easier Than You Think!)

Components of the doll chair
I was making two...so that is why there are duplicates of the frame and seat.

  1. Cut everything out from 65 lb. cardstock: One frame, one seat, four legs.  I used chipboard for the upholstery version for the chair frame and I cut an additional chair frame to sandwich the glued sides together.
  2. Fold the legs along the diagonal lines to make them stand strong
  3. Glue the legs to the four corners of your seat
  4. Fold the frame at right angles where the creases show you
  5. Pop that seat right inside the frame and glue it in place

And just like that, you've got yourself a chair!

Want to Get Fancy? Let's Talk Upholstery!

This is where you can really let your creativity shine! If you want to give your chair the full designer treatment, add some fabric before you start gluing things together.

Fabric Tips

  • Go lightweight: Heavy fabrics are tricky at this tiny scale
  • Think thin and flexible: These will cooperate much better with your glue
  • Watch those patterns: Big prints might overwhelm such a little chair
  • Test first: Some fabrics are just stubborn about sticking to cardstock

Cover your chair frame and seat with fabric by cutting the fabric about a 1/4 inch larger than the pattern piece.  Glue the fabric to the cardstock. Two chair frames are glued together to make a sturdy chair frame. 

Why I Absolutely Love This Project

This little chair project has everything I adore about crafting: it's thoughtfully designed, uses clever techniques, includes helpful calibration tools, and works for any size doll you can imagine. Plus, the engineering principles work beautifully no matter what scale you're working in.

The scalability feature means you're not just making one cute chair - you're mastering a system that can furnish dolls of all sizes! 

Happy crafting, friends! 💕



For those of you who want to resize the TurtleStitch design using the Silhouette Software

Change the scale factor for the new doll chair size

The formula for calculating the scale factor for the new chair is:

Scale Factor = NewDimension / Original Dimension

To scale a 5-inch doll pattern to fit an 18-inch doll, the scale factor would be 18/5 = 3.6. 

Make a new chair pattern

  1. Run the program with the new scale factor.
  2. Export the TurtleStitch design as a DXF file
  3. Import into Silhouette software
  4. Release the compound path to access individual components
  5. Look at the reference one inch square for its measurement 
  6. Calculate scaling factor: (1.00 ÷ reference square measurement) × 100
  7. Apply the calculated percentage in the Transform Panel


𝑆𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑒𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟=18𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠(𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑑𝑜𝑙𝑙)5𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠(𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑑𝑜𝑙𝑙)=