Mandala Quilt

Here's an idea I had a little while ago. One of the things I've been making for a while now are photo mandalas. Basically you take a photograph of something, open it up in Photoshop, then take a pie-shaped slice of it, which you then flip, merge down, copy, paste, turn, &c., until you have a mandala, the number of segments depending on the angle of the original pie slice. To wit:

(From an original photo of autumn sumac leaves and berries.)

Mandalas, kaleidoscope patterns, quilt blocks... hmmm, all very similar, aren't they?

So I thought I'd design some blocks with this mandala method.

This wasn't real high-tech, mind you; pretty much I just scribbled for a while on the 45° pie template in Photoshop until I got something, or rather, several somethings, I liked. So these are the 'quilt blocks' I eventually assembled together:

Now interpreting that out to quilt blocks is a little trickier than I thought, but I managed to get one done. From this sketch

I made

I've changed the colors around, since I'm making it in shades of green, with autumnal sort of accents in red, orange and yellow. Sort of the old M&M color scheme, but with an emphasis on the green (Eddie van Halen would be proud). The block is fifteen inches square, and sewn by hand.