Two matching black tattoos on a person's forearms, a sewing machine on the left arm and a pair of scissors with scrolled handles on the right, in a fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sewing machine and scissors on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two small black tattoos sit on the inner forearms of one person, a solid sewing machine with scrolled detailing on the left and a pair of open scissors with ornate handles on the right. The linework is clean and mostly uniform, with solid black areas on the machine base and fine outlines on the scissors. The pale background of a white shirt and a patterned wallpaper keeps the focus on the two designs.

Fine line Forearm Scissors Scrollwork Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The old Singer gave up on Tuesday, somewhere between the dodgems and the hall of mirrors, so I have been stitching the strongman's sequinned waistcoat by hand under the lorry's awning. Mr Ferris says there will be no new machine until Margate, and the treadle in the back of the caravan sulks every time it rains. Don't tell him I've been using the good scissors on the canvas. They were Nan's, and she'd have had me sewing sackcloth for a month for less.

I keep thinking about the morning Dad bolted that machine to the kitchen table and let us watch the iron base catch the lamplight. He had scrolled the arm himself, curl after curl, because he said a thing that cuts and a thing that sews ought to look like somebody cares for them. You were seven and wanted to ride inside the big wheel. I was nine and wanted the scissors, with their handles curled like two swans turned to face each other. Neither of us got our way that year, which is how I knew it was a proper one.

Your postcard came from Skegness with a painted horse on the front and a line at the bottom asking whether I still had the spare shears. I do. They're wrapped in the blue silk for the knife-thrower's girl, who has stopped wearing it now she's grown, and I have decided that makes them mine.

So here is the arrangement. Send me the measurements for your new act and I'll run up the costume on the old treadle, and you can pay me in sawdust and stories. The lights come down at the end of the week. When you come back, bring the sewing box, and I'll hand you the shears and the needle to go with them.

Love, Ada