Black and grey tattoo of a lace bow with a wrapped garter band around the upper thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace bow garter tattoo on thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large lace bow with two loops and long trailing ends sits at the centre of a lace garter band wrapped around the thigh. The linework is fine and detailed, with the lace pattern rendered in dense black ink and soft grey shading that gives the ribbon some depth. The image is in black and grey, with a plain light background and dark clothing at the top right edge of the frame.

Thigh Bow Lace Garter Ribbon

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Honiton believes the pattern was my idea. Mrs Ashdown wanted lilies and the Vicar's wife wanted something plainer, but the bow was what my hands kept returning to, the way a tongue finds a broken tooth. I worked it on sixty-two bobbins over three weeks, pinning each loop to the pillow with a hatpin Father had filed down for me the winter before he died.

Keep reading

The band was the difficulty. Lace wants to lie flat, and a leg never lies flat for anyone. I made the band wider than the order asked and drew a fine strand of net through its heart so it would keep its shape when the wearer moved. Mr Pardoe at the mill called it a waste of good thread. He said so on a Tuesday, and on the Friday he came back with his own wife's order in his hand and asked for the same thing.

I left the bow with two long trailing ends, the way the old pattern books drew them, because a loose end is the only honest part of any knot. When it was finished I carried it down to the river and held it up to the light off the water so I could see the holes. Every hole was a decision someone had made with a pin. That is what lace really is: a hundred small refusals to let the thread go wherever it pleased.

The order was for Clara Dunning, who was to be married in the spring to a saddler from Exeter. She never came in for the fitting. Mrs Dunning brought the garter back in brown paper in June, still wrapped, and asked me to keep it. It sits on my sill now, catching the morning light, and I have never decided whether it was made for a wedding or for a leaving.