Scrappies are my favourites. I do not prepare fabric into any size etc- I just trawl through books/mags/internet until I find a pattern that I like then I go through my stash and scrap bins.
I also like to use either black/white as a solid colour (as can be seen in my avatar) and I always put on a border - generally using a tone on tone fabric that pics up some of the colours used in the blocks.