How about a row of tents at the top? Or a couple tents and a couple of trees?
I blanket stitch the appliques down.You can do that as part of the quilting, but it means a lot of manhandling the quilt to go round the appliques. I don't like to quilt over the appliques, just around them in the blocks. It can be a lot of layers to try and quilt through also sometimes, if you were to try and quilt through them.