A New Quilt and a Lot of Play with EQ8

Finally figured out how to insert my mandalas into Electric Quilt -- whew..  I have wanted to try out some layouts before I cut into the hand dyed fabrics which I will use with the mandalas as I have a finite amount of the colors here in NY.  So this isn't a real quilt yet and I want to simplify a bit more so it can potentially  be made into a pattern.

This is a second variation leaving out that middle block.  I like it better but think I want to cut down on the strips.

This is a block I saw online somewhere -- not sure where.  It was in a quilt and was a little bit of a challenge to figure out and then diagram in EQ.  It is really very simple but when you rotate every other block, it takes a bit to figure it out!

Here are the first blocks I did and you can begin to see that it is a little confusing.

I haven't added the 2 inch border yet but this is 9 blocks which makes a 36 x 36 quilt which will  be 40 x 40 when I add the border.  Each of the individual pieces is 2 1/2 inch x 4 1/2.  I used 21 wide strips and sewed strip sets of 5 deeply colored pieces with a additional light colored one on the end. Then you cut 4 1/2 inch wide strips.  The tricky part is to make sure that the light strip is always in the same corner (you don't have to ask how I know!!).  It is super quick and easy and ideas were just swirling around as I stared at this including reversing the colors completely, using yellows and pinks where the dark colors are now and then using shades of purple and blue/purple in the white areas.  I had a couple of more thoughts which I played with in EQ.  These are below.

In this version, I surrounded the light strips with yellow.

 In this one, I replaced the light strips with a darker color.