Black lace-pattern tattoo with roses and tassel edging wrapped around a forearm, against a green wall and a white sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace-pattern band with roses on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A band of black lace-like filigree wraps around the forearm, with a cluster of roses and leaves at the top and fringed tassels hanging along the lower edge. The linework is solid and detailed, with open areas of skin showing between the motifs. The image is a close, straight-on view with a plain green background and a white top visible at the right.

Blackwork Botanical Forearm Lace Rose Leaves Tassel Filigree Pattern

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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

Dear Ivy, the bobbin lace came back from the dyers on Tuesday, and I have not slept properly since, because the pattern is wrong and nobody in Ruddington will admit they cut the wrong threads. Mrs Pargeter swears it was always like that. It was not. I have the card from the old sampler in the tin under my bed, and the roses on the top border should be seven, not five, with the tendrils running down through the fringe like someone let go of a rope.

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Put the kettle on before you read the rest. Your father wants the back room cleared for the Whit fete stall, so the lace frames are going into the coal shed, and I told him the coal can freeze first.

Mind the tassels when you pin them. Each one is knotted by hand, nine knots to a tassel, and the last one I did for Mrs Ashdown's wedding came apart in the post because I was too proud to ask for the thicker thread. Take the good navy cotton from the drawer, not the grey. The grey goes muddy under lamplight.

I have kept the sampler folded in tissue. When you come on Sunday, bring your mother's spectacles and we will sit at the table with the card between us and count the roses together, row by row, until the pattern sits straight on the page the way it did before anybody touched it.