Black and grey lettering tattoo on a forearm showing a sewing machine above the words 'As ye sew, so shall ye rip', in a lettering and traditional style.

As ye sew sewing machine tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A sewing machine is drawn in shaded greyscale inside a circular frame, with a needle and thread visible at the foot. The phrase 'AS YE SEW' sits above the machine and 'SO SHALL YE RIP' curves beneath it, both in serif capitals. The work is shaded in black and grey on a pale forearm against a dark background, with the composition centred on the design.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My gran had a saying for everything that came off the treadle machine in the back room of the lighthouse cottage, and she said it as if the machine itself were listening. As ye sew, so shall ye rip. I was nine the first time I heard it, watching her unpick a hem I had botched on a tea towel, the seam bristling with snipped thread like a net left out in the rain.

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Sixty years of oilskins came through that room. The keeper's wife took in mending from every boat that rounded the Skerry, and the boats came back with tears from the rocks. My gran worked the pedal with her heel, never her toe, and would not let me touch the needle until I could thread it blind. When I finally could, she sent me up to the lamp room with a bobbin of tarred twine and a coat with a torn sleeve belonging to Davie Munro, who had been careless on the slip.

I sewed that sleeve in an hour. It was a neat job, and when I brought it down she held it to the window, turned it inside out, and ran her thumb along the stitching the way you'd check a child for fever. Then she laughed and said Davie would tear it again by Friday, and it would be my seam he tore through, because a tight seam holds the strain and sends it to whatever weak cloth sits beside it.

Davie came back on Friday with his sleeve split along my line of stitches, and he stood in the doorway grinning like a boy caught out. My gran only nodded at me. I unpicked the whole thing, every knot, and sewed it again a little further from the edge. I still do it that way. Whatever I put my hands to, I think first about where the strain will go.

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