I'm in the midst of my first quilting and ended up meandering because it's all I'm really skilled to do at this point - and I didn't have a lot of time as DH has been pushing me to complete the quilt (it's for his elderly aunt).
In "preparing" myself for this, I watched tons of youtube videos. There was one group of videos by Golden Threads where she talked about auditioning designs and the elements she looked at within the quilt to choose some. Not a lot of detail, but worth watching. She also showed how you can audition designs on your quilt - using Golden Threads paper, of course.
I had so many ideas and so little time. I'm disappointed because I wanted to be more creative (even using my embroidery machine to quilt the designs) but I must say, the large stipple meander looks great.
Good luck.