Tomatoes Anyone?

In the dead of winter, fresh tomatoes are what I miss most.  Not those hard, grainy ones you can get at the grocery store all year; no, I'm talking the vine ripened, home grown (or locally grown) that are firm and juicy and red and so good on a sandwich.

I say, if you can't eat them now, why not paint them!  I painted these today on a small piece of canvas.  If you look closely (or click to enlarge), you might be able to see that I added a few pieces of torn telephone book here and there.  I'm absolutely not a painter, and I know this is no masterpiece, but I'm planning to turn it into a little quilt.  It will have lot of hand and machine quilting before I'm done with it, plus additional fabric and maybe even some beads.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.
I also made some strip pieced blue blocks today.  These are not sewn together yet.  I've divided my blue strips into lights, mediums, and darks, and these are obviously from the light group.  Once I've made all the blocks and sewn them together, I'm thinking this might make a great background for a portrait quilt.  I think I already have a photo in mind.  More on this later.

Another project for today was working on my circle quilt challenge.  This has gone so much faster than I expected!  I finished the entire top today!  I'm going to do a bit of applique on it, hopefully tonight.  Tomorrow I'll baste it to the batting and backing.