I actually get most of my inspiration from the "real world" - my husband laughs at me because I am always snapping pictures of things that inspire me - could be a pattern on a fabric (hotel fabrics are great for quilt ideas) or maybe a tile floor, or maybe just patterns a fence is making with shadows on the ground.
A lot of it doesn't directly translate into a specific quilt, but that's the kind of thing that excites me and makes me feel creative.
When I'm actually MAKING a quilt, often my 'inspiration' is guided by how much I have of the fabrics I want to use. And by mistakes I make along the way, LOL.
I also doodle on graph paper a lot, and often play around in Eq7, looking for interesting pattern repeats if I twist common blocks this way or that. I've "made" probably hundreds of electric quilts, but most haven't made their way into fabric yet!