09/21/2026
This quilt is "Tribute to Molly Upton's 'Alchemy'" (34" x 40") by Liz Gray. See it in the current exhibit "American Quilt Studies Group Presents Quiltmakers and Designers 1945-1979."
Liz says: "I learned about Molly Upton at Dana Hall School, her alma mater, where I worked as the library director for 22 years. Molly graduated in 1971, long before my tenure, but her art teacher, Gene Scattergood-Moore, was my colleague, and the exhibit of her work that he mounted in 2000 was my introduction to her quilts.
Molly's quilts are innovative in their designs and full of color and vitality.
Though she is a key figure in the quilt revival of the 1970s, Molly did not reinterpret traditional patterns. Rather, she applied her knowledge of painting and calligraphy to the medium of fabric and thread. Alchemy was her last quilt, and, as its name suggests, it transforms the base materials of cotton and corduroy, quintessential 1970s fabrics, into a masterpiece of glowing color and texture. My tribute to Alchemy attempts to replicate, on a smaller scale, her process of creation and combination, but using today's tools and materials. Though hand quilting is not my forte, I did follow Molly's lead by hand quilting with a variety of colored threads.
Molly died by su***de in 1977, just a few months before I graduated from college, and in a city where I once lived. Her senior yearbook shows a girl with long hair parted down the middle, a photo remarkably similar to the one in my senior yearbook. I feel a deep sense of kinship with her, and I mourn the premature loss of her unique artistic sensibility. She left the world fewer than 30 quilts (or, as she called them, 'quilted tapestries'), but to today's quilt historians, they are a precious legacy."
