Black lace-pattern garter tattoo wrapped around a thigh, with dotted bands above and below the lace panel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace garter tattoo on a thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a thigh with a black tattoo in the form of a lace garter band. A wide panel of dense, scrolling floral lace sits between two thin bands of small beaded or chain-like detail. The linework is crisp and solid black with no visible shading, and the ink sits flat against warm skin on a plain background. The band wraps horizontally across the middle of the thigh, with black fabric visible at the top edge of the frame.

Thigh Lace Garter Scroll Floral Bead Chain

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

Sit down, sit down, you're letting the cold in. Right. You want the one about the garter, the one nobody's asked for since the big wheel came off its axle at Hollins Green. Hold your tea.

Keep reading

There was a lace-maker in Nottingham called Ada Venn who could tat a flower so fine it would pass through a wedding ring. Her husband ran the cart that carried the lace round the fairs, and he had a habit of losing money at the card tables before the second bell. So Ada made him a promise, the sort you make in a draughty caravan at four in the morning: every pound he lost, she'd stitch a stitch, and when the stitches reached the edge of the cloth, he'd have to stop.

He lost a great deal. She stitched a great deal. By October the band ran from one end of the caravan to the other, scrolling like ivy, with little silver beads sewn between every second row so it rattled when the wind got under the canvas.

Then one night the wind got under the whole caravan and it went over on the common by the river. Ada walked out of the wreck with the band wound twice round her wrist and the card money clenched in her other fist. She never once said whose debt it was. She only said, whenever a man asked her to dance, that the lace was tighter than it looked.

So if you're thinking of winning anything tonight, mind your garters. Lace keeps accounts.