I taught myself to quilt by picking out a bunch of star blocks on Quilter's Cache and designed a couple myself. I also had a very limited stash to choose from and was trying to control the color scheme so only allowed pink, blue, white and purple fabrics. I learned more on that one quilt than all the others combined!

I like sampler quilts. Have two going for AGES now. When I'm bored, have no particular thing to work on, want to make a test block for another project, I make a block for one of the two samplers from their respective fabric sets. One is 15", started as a BOM. One is 12" blocks, started as a learn to quilt project, got left behind as I DID learn. I like your setting idea in the photo! Might just do that....

Here's my brown one: http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-74601-1.htm

And a brighter one from a couple of years ago: http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-4075-1.htm

I didn't buy a pattern. I used some 12 inch quilt blocks that I liked and did a search on quilter's cache website to find some more.

They are fun to do.