well this is wierd

Ok so I don't know what happen apparently I am blog challenged.  I went to Google Reader and low and behold all my lovely photos so who knows.  Anyway I will be posting the rest of the top later today. 
Note:  I will switch out the mag for another charm pack and send it out to you on Monday!

Well a little mail call 1st!  Yes I have a fabric issue, don't judge look how cute this fabric is!

The gift for the 1st blogger and commenter  (Quilt Blocks by Ellen Baker for moda) Thank you so much Maria!

Ok Charm pack.  This is called City Blooms by Kitty Yoshida, and who knows where it came from.

I like to open it up and dig in.  This particular charm pack only has 25 so I used 2.

I kinda sorted them out and matched them up,

Did a little math in my head ummm...7 x 7=49 so 7 rows by 7 rows with one left for the ole stash.  Laid them all out the way I wanted them.  (note I did change this after seeing this pic and the 2 with the lines close to each other bugged me so I moved it all around.  You can lay this out on the floor a bed whatever!

Ok now to sew.  As you can see I took the 1st two in the top row.

You place these right sides of the fabric together (the pretty colorful side)

And sew a 1/4 in seem

looks something like this.. You continue this process down the row (top row from right to left)

if you can see this it is call chain piecing.  That is where you have a pile of 2 squares together and sew them with out cutting the thread.  If that freaks you out don't do it.  When I first started it was to much pressure.

Oh pressing (yes you have to iron, a lot in quilting)  take you sewn squares to the iron.

There are two common ways to iron the seems toward one side (most of the time toward the darker fabric) and this will be referred to as toward the dark in patterns and such,

Or open.  Now I bounce between both depending on what I am doing.  For this all to one side will be fine and quick!  You can wait till you get your whole row done before even starting to iron and I will show you a trick on down.

Ok so now keep sewing your squares together always right sides of the fabric facing each other.

Start to look like this.

And then you have a lovely row of squares.

Ok now iron all your seems one way.  I did all these toward the right all at one time and you will see why soon.

Row 2 sewn together, same process as above.

These seams I pressed all to the left.

Now you can join row 1 and row 2 ( you can sew all rows together before this step, but as I said I get about 20 min before homework supper and wild animals demand my attention.)

As you can see with the seams pressed to opposite sides they "nest"  together.  This is how you get you seams to line up and everything look clean and crisp and all lined up on the pretty side.

I like to pin all my seams.  You can feel them kinda lock into place when they are lined up and then just stick a pin in there so when you are sewing things don't get crazy.

Pinned

Lots of pins.  No this is where homework kicked in and supper so you can go on and continue the process and finish the quilt top or just get all your rows sewed and pinned and I will be back tomorrow with finishing up the top.

Thanks so much.  Wish I had a few more followers.  If you find this helpful please share and pass it on.  If not then let me know.  If there are any questions or something is unclear please ask.  I am in the middle of cooking while typing so who knows how this sounds.  Thanks for stopping by!!!