Circle on circle. It's a 9 patch variation from the thirties. Take your regular 9 patch blocks and cut out football shaped sections between the blocks to get a general idea of what it looks like. Similar in some ways to Robbing Peter to Pay Paul.
Never pick a pattern with curved seams for your first quilt. I should be fairly good at sewing curved seams by the time I'm done though and my wife likes it.
Rodney