Forearm with a red botanical rose tattoo framed by grey lace work and red splatter dots, with applied pearls and crystals over the design.

Red rose with grey lace and pearls on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large red rose sits at the centre of the forearm, shaded in deep red and dark grey with soft outlines. Grey lace-like linework, a smaller rose, and red dot splatter surround it, and white pearls and clear crystals have been applied over the design in curving lines. A white lace fabric is visible at the left edge against green grass.

Botanical Forearm Rose Lace Pearl Crystal Dot Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag, the lace came over on Tuesday's boat, wrapped in oilcloth and smelling of the hold. I've been unpicking it by lamplight with the window open, because the wind off Skerra won't let a candle stand still. Mrs Gowrie wants her mother's pattern copied loop for loop, and the pearls sewn so they fall the way they did on the old dress. I never saw that dress. I only have the women at the pier, who all remember it differently.

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The rose is the difficult part. She wants it red, but not the red of the chapel rose that climbs the north wall, which bled into the render after the gale and left those little freckles across the stone. She wants it deep, like wine left standing in a glass. I mixed three reds before she nodded. Then I laid the grey lace over the top a scallop at a time, pinning each one so the rose showed through like a face behind a veil. The crystals I stitched last, one at a time, because she said a bride should be looked at, not dazzled.

On Thursday the pearl box slid off the shelf and I spent an hour on my knees gathering them from the floorboards. One was grey and lopsided, nothing like the others. I nearly swept it out with the dust. Instead I sewed it into the hem, where nobody will find it unless the skirt lifts on a windy day, and I told Mrs Gowrie it must have been a mistake. She laughed and said her mother had a habit of leaving things in hems too.

Write back soon and tell me the mainland weather. The boat is late again, and I have eleven yards left before the ferry takes the dress over. Your loving sister, Ailsa.