Tattoos - Jacomina de Regt - "Needle work"

Tattoos: "Nihil Interit"

I wanted to show the tattoos that my children have.  

My son's is  Omni Mutantur, Nihil Interit", or "Everything Changes, Nothing Perishes" (or "Nothing is Lost") by Ovid in Metamorphosis. 

My daughter has two tattoos.  Her first one is so faded we could barely find it and it is no longer visible in a photo I took.  She participated as a subject in a performance artist's event and got a very small tattoo which says "Peace" in light green. 

Her second tattoo is Crux, the star constellation known as Southern Cross, to remind her of living in the Southern Hemisphere.  It is done in aqua blue with a black border around each star. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crux

The family anecdote is that I very fiercely and convincingly announced to my children that I would cut off all financial support for college if they got tattoos/piercings, did drugs or got married.  So, my son's tattoo is around his ankle (easily hidden by socks) and my daughter's in the middle of her back, also hidden.  The joke is that in the hot and humid Virginia summers, wearing socks while home from college, just became too much and that I never even noticed the tattoo.  

I wanted to make a really deep statement with this quilt about tattoos being a different kind of needlework compared to the meaning it had for me when growing up.  I was looking in my inherited stash of textiles for a piece of needlework done by my aunt, my mother's oldest sister who was a sewing and needlework teacher and did exquisite work.  However, there was nothing that showed off her work.  Yet, there was this little glass curtain, with factory stitching.   Why was that curtain saved by my mother?   It does show needlework!

It even sparked a second deep thought, about the glass curtains allowing glimpses into the homes (especially in the Netherlands) as tattoos allow glimpses into the souls of those who choose to place them.  As my son remembered: this quote helped him to see that even though everything in his life was changing, the ancient wisdom is that in fact, deeply underneath, everything stays the same.  

I am very dissatisfied by this piece.  I turned the Latin phrase around; I could not find a good way to get the words as well as the constellation on the small size; the light green quilting just did not show up, so I added the words in orange, my favorite color, but that does not look good either.

"Nihil Interit, or Nothing is lost" by trying and that's the joke on myself.