Painting Swirls on Fabric

Creating swirls using a small amount of fabric paint is a great technique that provides the illusion of length and texture to your garment. This is a very simple concept using “S� patterns down the side of a leg or the length of a sleeve. This pattern is lightweight and not overwhelming.

Supplies:

Dance garment
Paint or paints
Brushes
Paper plates
sheets of paper

Directions:

Choosing Your Materials
First of all, you will want to choose the garment or garments to be decorated with these swirls. Next, you would need to choose the color or colors of paint that you want to use. Your colors could be complementary colors or colors that are just a lighter or darker shade of the garment’s color.

Painting the Garment
For our demonstration, we will use a piece of Lycra to show you exactly what we want to do. Before you do anything, you will want to plot out your swirl design on a piece of paper or extra piece of fabric. In the case of our demonstration, we are going to make two swirls. We have decided the size we want. So, we created a piece of paper that is half the length of the area involved and then drew one swirl the length of that paper creating a guide to paint the swirl on the fabric. On our demonstration piece, we used a pen to mark the garment rather than tailor’s chalk or a bar of soap so that hopefully you can see the markings but you would not want to use a pen because it may be hard to cover.

Before you actually start painting the swirl, put your guide next to the fabric. Set your guide above the first half of the fabric of the sleeve or arm and copy the swirl onto the fabric. From that point, you can use your guide to place the other swirls. Using your guide and the tailor’s chalk or a bar of soap, mark the starting point and the ending point of the first swirl on the fabric. If you do not feel comfortable drawing the swirl freehand, you could use the tailor’s chalk or bar of soap to draw the swirl itself and then paint next to it.

Move the guide and repeat the process for any subsequent swirls. Another option would be to overlap the swirls. So, you would be making three swirls and your guide would be adjusted for that. Mark the beginning and ending spot for all three swirls. Paint the first swirl and with your starting point inside the second curve, start your second swirl. Then, do the same for the third swirl. Depending on the size of the swirls, the number of swirls on the leg or sleeve, and the look you want to achieve you could use more than one color for the swirls.