It's good to see you are making progress. Very few of our first quilts are objects of delight and wonder except maybe to ourselves, but I've had friends with significant sewing experience do marvelous things on their first quilt. lol, all I can say is it wasn't like that for me. I think a lot of us do finish that first piece but probably a lot of UFOs are first quilts, and if you think you can improve your project and feel like it, you can try cutting the blocks smaller, or cutting the strips different widths, sewing them back together and not caring if the seams match or not.
I have friends who order a lot from Connecting Threads and I always enjoy their catalogs.
I don't do many kits myself and there are all sorts of kits. Some include fabric yardage and cutting directions, some feature all pre-cut pieces. Kits can be a good way to get started, classes (if being offered) even when it seems expensive maybe better. Grouped fabric collections help a lot of people, the precuts and such which includes the fat quarter packets.
A lot of people start by kits or classes, move on to using designed projects with coordinated groups of fabrics, and then feeling secure enough start making their own design/fabric decisions. Other people have more pronounced design sense and go maverick from the beginning.