My best advice for your first quilt would be make a small quilt (baby or lap size to donate if you don’t have a person to give it to) just to keep from overwhelming yourself. Eleanor Burns of “Quilt in a Day” was the first pattern I used and she wrote the steps for an “Irish Chain” quilt that even I, with recent with brain damage, could follow, including fabric generous requirements, but best of all she started me with a model for organizing the making of all future quilts. You can find the pattern online new or second hand (my income preferred method to buy books).
Here is a link to an available copy I found by googling it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/1630260...f7d3d0ffeda6ab