MONROE - If you give Mary Alice Hart a portrait, there's a good chance she can turn it into a quilt.
She will be at the Quilt Expo in Madison giving a one-hour lecture called "Faces in Fabric" where she will talk about the process of turning portraits into quilts. The expo runs today through Saturday in the Exhibition Center at the Alliant Energy Center. Hart will give her presentation twice, at 1 p.m. today and Saturday.
Hart, who has lived in Monroe for 51 years, originally is from Olney, Illinois, where she grew up watching both her mother and grandmother make quilts. Her mother mostly taught her how to sew, and it wasn't until Hart retired as the family consumer education teacher for both Monroe Middle School and Monroe High School, where she worked for 32 years, that she got into the craft of quilt making.
While her mother and grandmother made quilts mostly for functionality, Hart quilts as a creative outlet. She has taken several quilting classes and continues to do so.
Hart goes to the Quilt Expo in Madison every year and has been teaching at the expo for about five years now. In order to present at the expo, she had to send in a proposal, which is reviewed and then either accepted or rejected.
Making art quilts as opposed to more traditional quilts is better from Hart's perspective because you don't have to be committed to a huge quilt. You can make whatever size you desire. Her favorite part of quilting is the process of starting a piece and getting it put together. But once it's time to sew everything together, that is the part Hart dreads.
"That's where you can screw it up," Hart said.
The biggest quilt expos are in Houston and Paducah, Kentucky. If you can't make those, Hart recommends the Madison Quilt Expo because not only will it showcase international quilts, but also cream-of-the-crop quilters from all over Wisconsin.
"I always said when you see that kind of work, you either leave inspired or depressed," Hart said. "Depressed that you can't do that well of a job or inspired to do better."
She will be at the Quilt Expo in Madison giving a one-hour lecture called "Faces in Fabric" where she will talk about the process of turning portraits into quilts. The expo runs today through Saturday in the Exhibition Center at the Alliant Energy Center. Hart will give her presentation twice, at 1 p.m. today and Saturday.
Hart, who has lived in Monroe for 51 years, originally is from Olney, Illinois, where she grew up watching both her mother and grandmother make quilts. Her mother mostly taught her how to sew, and it wasn't until Hart retired as the family consumer education teacher for both Monroe Middle School and Monroe High School, where she worked for 32 years, that she got into the craft of quilt making.
While her mother and grandmother made quilts mostly for functionality, Hart quilts as a creative outlet. She has taken several quilting classes and continues to do so.
Hart goes to the Quilt Expo in Madison every year and has been teaching at the expo for about five years now. In order to present at the expo, she had to send in a proposal, which is reviewed and then either accepted or rejected.
Making art quilts as opposed to more traditional quilts is better from Hart's perspective because you don't have to be committed to a huge quilt. You can make whatever size you desire. Her favorite part of quilting is the process of starting a piece and getting it put together. But once it's time to sew everything together, that is the part Hart dreads.
"That's where you can screw it up," Hart said.
The biggest quilt expos are in Houston and Paducah, Kentucky. If you can't make those, Hart recommends the Madison Quilt Expo because not only will it showcase international quilts, but also cream-of-the-crop quilters from all over Wisconsin.
"I always said when you see that kind of work, you either leave inspired or depressed," Hart said. "Depressed that you can't do that well of a job or inspired to do better."