Three years ago I was lucky enough to spend my time at the Festival of Quilts in the company of Kate Percival as we took our turn manning the Modern Group desk on the Guild stand. We got on extremely well, to say the least (we had a scream!) and became firm friends although most of communications were via email. Sadly, the following year Kate was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive cancer and was too ill to attend Festival having done a huge amount of work towards that year's Modern Group Challenge 'Cottonopolis'. At the last moment a small group of us took over setting up the gallery following Kate's careful diagrams as close as possible; making sure we sent her quantities of photos to make her feel as included as we could despite her been 150 miles away. Between the photos and videos we asked the gallery visitors to make cat blocks for Kate so we could make a secret hug quilt for Kate. Amazingly we managed to keep it quiet and she was surprised and touched to receive it along with the waves of love that were being sent from all parts of the world. We found out just how far reaching her influence was, it became a very large hug quilt!
The quilt accompanied Kate to many subsequent chemo sessions, but sadly the cancer returned and this lovely person left us far too soon.
While she was the Exibitions Officer (sic) for the Modern Group Kate had an idea for a joint challenge for all the specialist groups within the Quilters' Guild. Various friends of Kate were instrumental in pushing the idea forward and this year saw the Joint Challenge gallery come to fruition:
British Quilt Studies Group chose the quilt we would all take as our inspiration
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