My oldest daughter recently asked me to make wall quilt with a mandala design. I cautiously agreed but after researching mandala designs, I was having second thoughts. My desi
gn style is anything but the precise and exact lines of a mandala. I’ve seen some beautiful mandala patterns and designs and I knew I could not replicate such quilts! Instead of throwing in the towel I tried to think about how I could apply my style and design to a quilt for her as I really wanted to give it a try. She and I talked about the fact that my mandala was not going to be precise and exact as you find in every other mandala but rather it would be more contemporary with variability in its eight sections. I was committed to piecing the entire project so there weren’t going to be any appliqued pieces either. She gave me color suggestions to match the décor of her room and off I went on an adventure in design.
Her colors were mostly neutral with some rust. I did a lot of playing around with fabrics before settling on my selection. I pieced one of the eight “rays” of the mandala and did some ripping and re-piecing before I found the right design and correct colors. The construction of the quilt was basically the piecing of each of the eight “rays”, then sewing them carefully together to create the circle with a small background at the end of the circle which I then squared off for the finished quilt. I’m still experimenting with creating center ‘point’s for quilts such as this….. THAT can be another blog!! The end result may need to be labeled “A Mandala” for everyone else but in my mind it came as close as I can come with my quilt style and design. She was happy so I was happy!!