I have a suggestion for the next update. I had to change the code to pick a different size image for what I needed and think it would be worthwhile to make the plugin so you can choose between thumbnail, medium, large, and full

echo "<a href=\"".$post->guid."\">".get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID,'full',array('alt'=> trim(strip_tags( $post->post_excerpt )),'title' => trim(strip_tags($post->post_title))))."</a>\r\n";

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/featured-images-widget/

First off great plugin. It saved me a bit of time on the project I am working on.

How would I add a posts metadata to the plugin?
I tried this method with no success.

$meta_quote = get_post_meta($post->ID,’home-page-excerpt’,TRUE);
echo $meta_quote;

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/featured-images-widget/