Lots of good advice so far and probably lots more to come. Even if you have some experience quilting, I suggest signing up for
www.pinterest.com and search for quilts. Lots of eye candy and you will see what your color scheme is. Wish I had this website when I started quilting. You can copy/print into word doc for future reference. I'm like Annie. See a quilt, figure out the block, done.
Once I found "my groove" (and it really hasn't changed much over the years) I always buy background fab by the bolt... always same color scheme meaning tone on tone...white with white pattern, beige ToT, off white ToT. I buy lots of polka dot fab too that I use for sashing and bindings to tie the blocks together.
This works for me but maybe not for you.
(I hope this all makes sense. I started this post 4.00 AM)