Black and grey dotwork dreamcatcher tattoo with feathers and a floral mandala on the inner forearm.

Dreamcatcher and feathers on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large dreamcatcher design covers the forearm, with a dotted mandala and floral motif at the top and three feathers hanging from a central ring. The work uses fine single-needle linework and stippled dotwork shading, with lace-like scrollwork and rows of dots filling the upper section. The image is entirely black and grey, shot close up on a white sheet with a second arm crossing the frame.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Dreamcatcher Feather Mandala Flower Lace pattern Dot Circle Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mary Ashdown had been told that a net of willow and bobbin thread would hold whatever a sleeper wanted to keep, so she spent the winter of her fourteenth year making one for her grandmother, who had stopped sleeping through the night since the boats went out without the Corrie brothers.

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The frame was willow, cut green from the bank behind the chapel and bent into a ring while it was still wet. Mary wound it with thread until her knuckles split, then tied the lace across it in patterns her grandmother had taught her from a pattern book with the cover missing: a rose, a bell, and rows of tiny dots the old women called peas. Where the lace was thickest she sewed a ring of pearl buttons, one for every name she could find in the parish register. Three feathers hung from the bottom, a gull's, a jackdaw's, and one she never found the bird for.

On the last night of the year she hung the net over the bed and sat up to watch it. The candle guttered. Nothing came through the lace but the draught from the window, which lifted the feathers and set them turning.

Her grandmother woke at dawn, calm for the first time since Michaelmas, and said the boats were in. Mary did not ask how she knew. She only took the net down and unpicked the lace from the top, one dot at a time, so it would be ready for the next winter.