Black and grey lace-style tattoo of a flower and scrolling vine across a woman's shoulder and upper chest.

Lace-style flower tattoo on shoulder and chest

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A woman wears a black top that she holds closed at the chest, with her head turned away and only her ear and part of her jaw visible. Across her shoulder sits a large botanical flower with layered petals, which flows into a long paisley-like lace vine that trails down towards her chest. The fine linework and stippled shading give a delicate lace effect, set against a dark background with soft, natural lighting.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sister Honora had been pricking the same pattern for three days, and the parchment already showed the marks of her pin. The mother superior wanted a single flower for a wedding veil by spring, its petals stacked like the layers of a cabbage rose, with a vine that would trail from it without a break. Across the workroom, the novice Agnes sat with her bobbins in a clattering heap, and her vine kept ending in mid-air.

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"It isn't the pins that fail you," Honora said, lifting the pillow so the candlelight ran along the threads. "It's the hand that hurries. You must let the vine know where it is going before you ask it to turn." She showed the girl how to cross the pairs, twist, and pin again, the small ticking going on until the candle needed trimming. Outside, the bell for vespers rang over the wet water meadows, and neither of them looked up.

Agnes tried again that night alone. In the morning the vine ran out from the outer petal, looped twice around a stray pin, and continued down the page to the place where the design would meet the hem. It was not perfect. A small gap sat where her thread had drawn too tight. Honora found it, touched it once with a fingertip, and said nothing for a long moment.

Then she took a fresh sheet of parchment, drew the petals in a ring, and set the pricker in Agnes's palm. "Start from the centre this time," she said. "Let the vine find its own way down, and when it goes wrong, carry it on anyway."

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