Seasonal Sky Quilt: Christmas

I have the idea to do a dark background quilt with white embroidery of stars and Christmas things but it is not coming together very well. I want to divide it into vertical panels and let light elements -- ribbon? fiber? sheer fabric? needle-felted fiber stripes? -- run down the vertical panels behind the embroidery like snow or Northern lights. I just found two quilts by Judith Trager that also have a seasonal theme and are using a vertical stripe. One is even winter-y. I like how she have handled the horizontal bands and made lots of surface activity.