This sounds like so much fun! Go ahead and sign me up. I went to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque last year, and it was so beautiful. It would be nice to have a little quilt that kind of commemorates it.

There is a 6" paperpieced pattern here that doesn't look too hard: http://www.reocities.com/pcpiecers/hot6pattern.html

When you say 12 blocks all alike - does that mean the same color scheme as well as pattern used? Because that sounds terribly boring.

Edited to add: not that the final quilt would be boring, just that sewing 12 exactly the same blocks would be.

Would love to see your pics. Hope you can post soon. :-)

Welcome to the manifest! While 12 blocks the same can be boring to do, you will get one of yours back and 11 from 11 others! Please see the requirements for the swap in the group activities section. You mentioned a 6" block, these need to be 12.5 unfinished.

Yes, I realized it was 12" finished blocks.

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but when it says 12 blocks "All alike" does that mean that the color scheme must be alike on each one as well as the block pattern? I.E. do they have to be all red balloons with a blue stripe, or can some be blue with yellow, green and purple, etc.

No, you are not dense. There is a lot of time and investment and you just want to make sure your blocks will work.

I think it means all the same pattern but colors are interchangeable. Somebody correct me quickly if I'm wrong.

Just to clarify, the 12" is the finished block (after adding to other blocks), which means 12-1/2" blocks unfinished. (Just in case you didn't already know that, but you probably did :-) )

Design should be the same, may use different colors for the balloons, as long as the pattern is the same. Oh, I just repeated myself.....

I did one block last night when all of a sudden it hit me. Are these blocks to be machine appliqued or hand appliqued?

It's my understanding they can be either, or they can be pieced.

Applique'd, pp, block design.......