I unfolded my plastic tablecloth and spread it over the dining room table. Quilling can be very messy, especially for beginners, and Mom would lose her mind if I got glue on her antique table again.

I began to lay out all my supplies—stencils, scissors, glue, quilling tools, shapers and, of course, paper. All kinds of paper. Plain paper in all the colors of the rainbow, textured, deckled edges, glittery, vellum. I even had some shiny origami squares that I’d gotten from Sam tucked away. I’d never used them in my art though.

When Oren arrived, I led him into the dining room and pointed at a chair. “I’ve got everything set up. You can sit there.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and put it on the table before dropping into the chair.

It was then that I realized we were going to have a problem. Oren’s right hand was still in the cast. Quilling is a two-handed job.

“Um,” I said, suddenly feeling awful for having forgotten about his injury. It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t be able to use his fingers enough for quilling, which can be really fiddly. “So for the first lesson, you have to watch me doing it.”

He looked at me very seriously. He had no idea I was making it up as I went along.

I grabbed my work-in-progress. “This is what I’ve been working on. It’s a meadow. I just need to add a sun up here and a couple more flowers and then it’ll be done. What do you think?”

Oren tilted his head.

“What?”

He grabbed his phone.

It needs something.

“Yes. It needs a sun. Here.” I poked my finger at the top corner. “Like I just said.”

No. Something more.

For a guy who knew nothing about quilling, he had some nerve! “What do you mean?”

Oren’s eyes darted around the picture and then he started typing on his phone again. Needs something on the side. Too much stuff on the bottom. Maybe a tree?

“What are you? Some sort of art genius?” I demanded.

He stared at me until I wanted to fidget. Instead I turned my head and looked at my picture. I held it away from me and then really looked at it—critically, like Dad had said to look at the paintings when we’d gone to the art gallery one Shabbat.

“Huh,” I said after a long moment of studying my picture as a piece of art. “A tree would be good,” I admitted. “Where would you put it?”

He showed me with his finger, tracing it down the left side of the picture. I tried to visualize a tree there, with lots of browns and greens to offset the light grasses and colorful flowers. I liked the idea.

“You’re right, Oren,” I said. “And I’m sorry I sort of yelled at you.”

He shrugged and started tapping at his phone.

Make the tree. I’ll watch & learn.

I put the picture down and got to work on creating the tree. Oren helped me pick out the different colors and handed them to me just as I needed them, shades of brown and even some black and deckled-edge beige. Most of the trunk was made of long strips arranged up and down, but I also coiled a few dark pieces into knots to make it look rough and natural. Once the trunk was done, I made branches. Then it was time for the leaves. Thankfully, I had lots of greens in different shades too. Oren watched as I used my special comb tool to make tons of coiled ovals that I pinched to have pointy ends like teardrops.