This is SO cool.

The Victoria and Albert Museum site has a really cool image-to-patchwork pattern maker.
The way the program abstracts the image can vary by degree of pattern difficulty and the amount of colors you like to use, which in turn effects how closely the pattern reflects your orginal image. I actually prefer the abstraction.

Here's what I came up with using this original photo (taken of a peacock at the Buffalo Zoo)

With 10 different colors and on medium difficulty, the patternmaker generated this pattern

View the details and download my pattern here.
Look at the galleries and make your own pattern too!