Nine block quilt- first two blocks

I've always admired quilts but up until now I've not tried making anything much myself.  But now I have a sewing machine that is not evil and I have a friend with a online fabric shop (Bella's Patchwork) with lots of pretty fabrics, I've no excuses (well aside from the lack of time, money and having lots of other crafting projects on hand already but they're merely minor details!)

I bought a book 'Quilting for the first time' by Donna Kooler.  It covers all the basics and covers a range of common techniques used in quilting.  Now in theory, one should take a book like this and start at the first projects, developing skills in the simpler projects before attempting the more complex projects.  But I'm can never be bothered with the first projects generally.  They are often for things that I would never want or use in a blue fit.  I do NOT like 'country kitch', which I'm afraid many of these projects often remind me of.  Or I just get caught by a lovely pattern towards the back.

This book was no exception, the project that caught me was the last of the book- a miniature quilt (about 1m square when finished) that is made of nine different traditional quilt blocks.  I figure it isn't TOO outrageous a first project since it does allow me to learn many different techniques.

Step one was to work out what fabric to get and it's hard!  Trying to work out what to get and what colours to use- tricky stuff.  I ended up getting several patterns of Moda's whimsy series since at this early stage, I can use all the help I can get.  Using the one manufacturer and series meant that all the colours should match.  I also got a small 'charm pack'- pack of 5 inch square pieces of material- because I thought that I could use some for smaller bits (but I don't know now I'm cutting out pieces how sucessful that will be).

But right now I've got a big pile of fabric to play with, and I hope it's enough (or I can get more before the end of the range!)  To date I've only cut out material for two of the nine blocks.  Here are the blocks and the book I'm using.

The pinwheel was fairly simple to sew (I started with it first for just that reason.

The Bearpaw block was harder- it turns out that (to my amatuer skills anyway) that there was a mistake in the book with the size of one of the blocks wrong (too long in one side by one seam length), plus trying to get the triangle squares in the right orientation took several tries.

Still, it's a good start. The cynic in me thinks that is because things will go wrong at the end when it's much harder to put right but hey, at least it means I can have fun in the mean time with nothing going wrong *ducks cautiously*  Now I need to work out what colours the next blocks will be so I can cut out bits of fabric... man, quilting is hard!