Two traditional style colour tattoos on a forearm pair, one with scissors, thread and buttons on a MAKE banner and one with a whisk, rolling pin and flowers on a BAKE banner.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Make and Bake sewing and baking forearm tattoos

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two matching traditional style tattoos sit on the inner forearms of a person. The left design shows scissors, spools of thread, buttons and a tape measure above a MAKE banner, while the right shows a whisk, rolling pin, candle and pink flowers above a BAKE banner. Bold black outlines and solid colour fills in red, yellow, blue and purple are set against soft purple shading behind the motifs.

Traditional Forearm Scissors Thread Spool Button Needle Banner Candle Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ivy,

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The lamp in my workroom was still burning when the first van rattled past, and I knew you'd already be up to your elbows in flour across the road. I could smell the proving dough through the gap under my door. Mother always said you could tell a Hallam girl by her hands, floury or pricked, and we have had both since we were nine.

I've finished the hem on Mrs Okonedo's wedding dress at last, forty-two pearl buttons sewn by hand, each one checked against the red thread I bought from Pyke's on Tuesday. The spool was the colour of your old cardigan. I thought of you when I pulled the last stitch tight and bit the thread, the way you nip the end of a piping bag. You'll say I'm soft. I'm not soft, I'm exact.

Last night I found Dad's yellow tape measure in the drawer under the scissors, the one with the cracked end, and I measured the window ledge. It came to exactly the width of the baking tray you used to borrow. I laughed out loud on my own in the shop. Then I got cross about it and put the kettle on, and the whisk I'd bent back into shape last month caught the lamplight like it was pleased with itself.

So here is my plan. Bring the rolling pin over at seven and I'll bring the candle from the till. We'll open the shutters together and the bread can wait ten minutes while we sit on the step with the buttons spilled between us, sorting them by colour the way we did when we were girls. Nobody needs to know who started it.

Love, Maud