This block came together very quickly, but it took me a long time to decide how to quilt it. I didn’t want to lose the ring, so I knew I wanted to treat all the green patches (center and corners) as background. I decided to do a small-scale meander there to make them recede.

I also decided to echo a quarter inch inside all the edges of the ring, but then I didn’t know what to do inside the echoed lines. Leave them? Do swirls or loops? In the end, I chose a wishbone design, after practicing it on paper a few times to make sure I could round the corners neatly. I’m happy with the choice and I like the way the block turned out!

Iowa is block 10 of the first Splendid Sampler and was designed by Sherri McConnell.