Lynn Cohen's "Other Place"

My last quilt was "Barcelona" and I showed my passing through Barcelona on my way to Israel. So the obvious "Other Place" for me was to follow up with a quilt depicting my five years living in Israel from 1961 - 1966. I was a young woman of 20 when I arrived there; I went for five weeks, which turned into five years. I met my husband to be at the second Kibbutz I stayed at. We married four months later. It seemed much longer. I learned to live the very quiet small farm collective life and was happy there for two years. We got pregnant on a visit home to California, returned and gave birth in Israel. Things got difficult when I had to leave my baby in the "Baby House" and have him raised mostly by women whose job it was to work there, while I worked elsewhere on the Kibbutz. The babies and children slept in their house, not their parents house at night. This did not work for me at all. When my son turned 18 months I took a vacation with him to California. I decided not to go back; and my husband followed a few months later.
That's the story behind the quilt. I will give it to my son this month for Chanukah, as a memento of his first year in Israel. His homeland.

The quilt is built of papers I either copied from materials I had at home; or letters and other written materials I asked for and got from an Israeli woman artist I met on line. It's all in Hebrew of course, printed and hand written. Israeli stamps were a gift from her as well, along with the bus tickets and zip code stamps, letters and envelopes. I cut out an outline of an map of Israel and drew it on the back of a brown paper grocery bag.
I collaged my papers (including photos on paper) onto the bag with glue. I sandwiched it with batting and backing fabric (blue and white: the colors of the Israeli flag); with the machine I sewed it in crazy quilt style. Then I hand sewed wool yarn in a blanket stitch around the outside of the map. I added turquoise beads I got for $1 at Michael's. It's my first paper quilt; and first map shaped quilt too.

The whole map of the state of Israel.

The top of the map shows my arrival date in Israel. And what I looked like when I first arrived.

The middle of the map shows where we lived and where I married and gave birth.

It also shows me pregnant.

The last photo shows my then husband holding our baby son

not long before I brought him/them to California in '66.

I hope you enjoyed traveling back to me to this "Other Place"!