Not Today Satan

Raw edge appliqué in an American traditional tattoo style. This piece is a back patch, sized and shaped to sit between the shoulder blades on the back of a jacket or vest, the way traditional biker and punk patches do. Except this one is sewn from fabric, not embroidered or screen-printed.

The flash design is traced and inspired by Phil Sparrow, one of the most important figures in twentieth-century tattooing, and a queer one. Sparrow was a confidant to Alfred Kinsey and helped document sexual behaviour among tattooed communities. He taught Ed Hardy, who would go on to become one of the most famous tattoo artists in history. Sparrow's influence on the art form is enormous, but his queerness is often written out of the story. This patch puts it back in.

The phrase "Not Today Satan" comes from drag queen Bianca Del Rio's iconic catchphrase on RuPaul's Drag Race. Pairing Sparrow's vintage tattoo style with a contemporary queer pop-culture reference felt right. It collapses the distance between queer tattoo history and the queer present into a single piece of fabric.

Construction

The patch is constructed using raw edge appliqué, hand-cut fabric pieces stitched down with a zigzag stitch that leaves the edges exposed. Over time, the edges will fray slightly, softening the graphic and giving the piece the kind of lived-in quality that good tattoo flash develops with age. The bold outlines and flat colour palette of American traditional tattoo translate naturally to fabric work. The same principles that make a tattoo readable at a distance make an appliqué patch legible on a jacket.