Black line drawing of four butterflies on a vertical vine of dotted scrolls, a fine line flash design with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vertical butterfly and scroll flash design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing shows four butterflies stacked down a vertical design, each with detailed wing outlines and small inner markings. Dotted vines and curling scrolls connect the butterflies and frame the composition on a plain white background. The artwork uses only black outlines with no shading or colour.

Fine line Butterfly Scroll Swirl Vine Dot

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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

The lace came off the bobbins on Tuesday with a fault in the fourth pattern, and Mrs Hollis says it is my fault for lifting the pins too early. I told her the thread was damp. She did not believe me, so I have stopped arguing and started drawing instead.

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I have sketched the new border on the back of the order book: a butterfly every hand's breadth up a curling vine, with pricked dots running along the stem where the pins will go. Four of them, climbing as if the vine were a wall they meant to see over. The lowest one has its wings spread wide, because I want it to be the first thing a customer sees when she turns back her cuff.

Last night I held the sketch up to the lamp and saw that the vine was not really a vine at all. It was a line of pinholes, and it ran the same way my sister walked out of the mill gate in March with her wages sewn into her boot. I did not say so to Mrs Hollis. I only told her the scrolls would take a fortnight.

Send the pricking card back with the carrier if you can spare it, Edie, and tell Father the border is nearly done. I will sew the top butterfly on the cuff myself, and I will set its wings the wrong way round, so that anyone who knows where to look will know whose hands made it.