It is a great time to learn Inkscape, they just released a new version recently that lets you make seamless textures much easier than in previous versions.
A great tip for Inkscape is to make a default.svg and place it in your c:\programfiles\inkscape\templates directory. That way you do not need to resize the image and set the grid every time you use it.
You can also add other custom templates there as well.
If you want inkscape to start a fraction of a second faster, delete all of the templates that you will probably never use. (they just seem to cluter things anyway.
There is another template directory that is hidden in your user-files somewhere. If you place the templates in that directory,they will always show up on the very top of the New File list.