Tattoo You

Happy Labor Day!

It’s been a pretty low key day around here. Got up early, fed the neighbor’s cats for them while they are on vacation and came home a made a dress.

This particular dress is nothing all that exciting. I pick up the fabric (polyester ITY) in Grand Rapids last spring. Bought it with the intentions of making McCall’s 5974. I had attempted this Perfect Knit Dress before but didn’t have enough fabric to make the ties so I made the scoop neck version and was less than happy with it.

I also discovered in a rather “well duh!” moment that the basis of this dress is pretty much the same as the tunic (McCalls 6120) that I’ve so far made two of and loved. This led me to start to wonder if I really wanted the ties at the waist after all. But I had the material and decided, “what the hell” and put them on. I like them. Also the skirt on the dress is pleated and it isn’t in the tunic. In the future I make modify the dress to be more like the tunic and eliminate the waist pleats.

Okay now for the interesting part of this post. You see it was in the mid-50s this morning when I got out of bed. Fall is definitely right around the corner. I was inspired to come up here and sew some plaid skirts and turtlenecks. But you see, last night I did something kind of awesome. Something I’ve been thinking about doing for a few years now and it inspired me to grab this black and grey swirly print instead.

Some of my friends took me to get my first tattoo. I’ve wanted one for years but after Shadow, then Heidi died I knew for sure that I wanted a tribute tattoo, But I didn’t want big ol’ portraits of my dead dogs on  my back or something. I wanted something pretty and delicate and something that I could add to in the future when the inevitable happens with Maizey and Castiel. If you look closely there are three tiny pawprints incorporated into the design. One is red, for Heidi. One purple, for Sophie. One Black, for Shadow. There is room to add more paws as needed.

I had been warned that foot tattoos in particular were quite painful. I’ve been asked numerous times already how bad it really hurt. I’m sure most of you won’t believe this but it really wasn’t all that bad. Sure there were moments that I had to remember to breath but overall it was nothing. Does this mean I’d be up for a total, full color back piece? No. Not because of the pain, because I’d get bored out of my mind sitting still for that long.

On the way home after it was done (I won’t bore you with the LONG dramatic story of how the entire evening went) and my friend was driving us back to my house I was still kind of quiet and in a weird place. He kept asking me what was wrong, I think he was worried that I already regretted it. I explained that I wasn’t the same woman who had left my house with him and our other two friends a few hours earlier. I was now a middle aged woman with a fucking foot tattoo! But seriously, this is kind of life changing. Not only is it literally permanent, it does change who I am in a very slight but very real way.

Do you have tattoos (I know MANY of my friends who read my blog do) and did getting them change you or how you perceived yourself? How? I know that having a visible to the world tattoo changes how others perceive you, I’m just waiting anxiously for the first day I work this week, do you perceive people with tattoos differently? Of course there is a difference between a tasteful foot tattoo and a prison neck tattoo right? Tell me your tattoo stories, here in comments (not on facebook comments, not all my readers are my facebook friends and I want everyone to participate in the conversation.)