Black and grey tattoo of a vintage sewing machine with the word Carolina on the front, placed on the outer upper arm of a woman in a white lace top.

Vintage sewing machine on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of an antique treadle sewing machine sits on the outer upper arm, with the word CAROLINA lettered across the machine body. The linework is bold and fairly detailed, with shaded areas giving the metal parts a worn, engraved look. The photograph is cropped to the shoulder and arm against a plain pale background, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Upper arm Sewing Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The machine came up the pass on the back of a mule in the second week of snow, wrapped in a blanket that had once been somebody's wedding shawl. Tomas walked behind it the whole way and would not let the driver rest it on the rocks. Nobody in Vell Hollow had ever owned a thing with iron feet that could sew a straight seam without a hand guiding it, and the women came up the lane to look at it before the wagon was unloaded.

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Its owner was a widow called Ilse Varga, who had learned to sew on a treadle as a girl in the lowlands and had not touched one since her husband's cart went over the edge at the Stone Gate. She told the women it was only a machine. Then she set her foot to the iron plate and the wheel began to turn, and the needle went up and down through a length of grey wool, and the sound filled the room like rain on a tin roof. Nobody spoke until she lifted the work free and bit the thread.

The pass was closed again by midwinter. Tomas came every evening to sit by the window and watch her feed the cloth under the foot. She sewed coats for the children, sheets for the sick, and one winter a set of shirts for the men who went down to trade, each with a small hidden stitch at the collar that only she knew how to make. When the thaw came, the mule was sent back down the valley with a bundle of finished work and a single bolt of blue linen for the mill-keeper.

Ilse never went back over the pass. The machine stayed in the front room where the light came through, and the lane took its name from it, Carolina Road, though nobody remembered who first said it. On still nights the women swore they could hear the treadle from the bridge, going steadily, as if someone were still at work on something that would not be finished.