A rare flash of brilliance

I've mentioned it in an entry or two that I've been sweating the design for my 4SQS mini quilt swap--this one has a holiday theme. Tomorrow starts the beginning of the 1 month window to get our quilts and their accompanying package-y bits finished and sent out. So I've been KILLING myself on this, stalking my poor swapee's flickr and blog, getting a feel for her style, and also thinking constantly about design elements for the approximate dimensions we were given in the guidelines.

What about stars? How Christmassy should I go with the fabrics? Most of my Christmas fabrics are a bit...muddy?--deep reds and greens, dark golds--but my recipient favors bright colors. How crazy do I go with this? Can I just go with Christmassy colors and not worry too much if there isn't holly or snowflakes or trees on every print? What about simple 9-patches? She does like improv-piecing and wonky blocks, I can do that, should I go with that? Can I come up with fabric that screams holiday enough to make that work?? *clutches head and cries*

On my lunch hour, I was perusing a flickr group on quilts, of course, and it suddenly came to me like I'd been struck. I knew EXACTLY what I was going to do. I knew dimensions, layout, colors, block styles, absolutely everything in a sudden flash. I dropped everything, grabbed my pencil and a ruler and some scrap paper and got it all down before it was gone. I can't wait to get home and pull fabrics for it. I wish I could share, but a) I'm at work and my camera isn't, and b) I think I'd like to keep this something of a surprise, just in case she reads my blog. I doubt it, but better safe than sorry. :)