Black ink lace pattern design with flowers, a butterfly and swirling vines on a beige background, shown as a drawing with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black lace and floral design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A repeating horizontal design of black lace-like mesh overlaid with stylised flowers, a butterfly at the upper left, and curling vines and swirls. The lines are fine and detailed, with dense filigree patterning and no shading. The design is shown in solid black on a pale beige background, with the motifs spread across a wide band.

Botanical Lace Flower Butterfly Swirl Vine Floral pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Peg,

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The veil came back from Mrs Tallis with a dead moth caught in the mesh near the left shoulder, and she wants it finished by Saturday or she'll take her custom to Sidmouth. I have been at the pillow since six. Mother's pricking is still pinned to the board where she left it, the one with the butterfly she drew in the margin in pencil, and I have not had the nerve to pick up a bobbin on that corner. Every time I try, the threads cross over each other like they're arguing.

Yesterday I sat with it until the lamp went out. Half the flowers are worked and the vine coils are the easy part, the sort of swirl your hands learn without asking you. It's the net ground that beats me, those little hexagons that have to sit square under the rest or the whole band sags. Mother used to say you don't weave lace, you persuade it. I thought she was being soft.

This morning the light came in low across the board and I saw the butterfly was not a butterfly at all but a gap, a place she had left on purpose for someone else to fill. So I did. I worked one wing from her pencil line and let the other be my own, a bit lopsided, and when I pinned the last sprig it held. Mrs Tallis can have it on Saturday. Come home soon and tell me I've made the wing too big.

Your loving sister, Ruth