Patterned Dress

This is a free printable Patterned Dress coloring page. It has 1036 separate areas to colour, thick outlines, and covers about 33.2% of the sheet in ink. It prints on one page at 300 DPI on both US Letter and A4.

Printing this page

Use cardstock, or at least 28 lb / 105 gsm. This page is very ink-dense - on copy paper it will show through, and wet media will go straight through it.

Print at 100% scale rather than "fit to page". Both downloads already leave a 0.25 in (6 mm) margin, which is inside the unprintable edge of every common home and office printer, so nothing gets clipped. The file contains no colour at all, so the black-only setting prints it faster and cheaper.

If it does not print right

This page puts a lot of ink down. On an inkjet, expect the paper to cockle unless you use at least 24 lb stock, and give each sheet a minute before stacking. On a laser printer it will be fine but it will use noticeably more toner than a typical page - worth knowing before you print a class set.

What's on the page

There are 1036 enclosed areas on this page - the separate pockets the outlines divide the drawing into. That is what decides whether a page feels quick or absorbing, far more than the subject does.

The narrowest channel between two lines measures about 0.47 mm at full print size. We measure this on every page because it is what decides whether a marker will bleed across an outline.

The composition is centered, which is worth knowing before you print - it determines how much white space sits around the edge of the drawing.

What to colour it with

For this page we would use coloured pencils or fine markers - the outlines are bold but some of the internal spaces are narrow.

Who this page suits

We put this page at roughly the 5-8 age range, based on the line weight and how many separate areas it has - not on the subject. Plenty of adults colour pages meant for children and the other way round; the band is a starting point.

This suits an early-years classroom as an early-finisher task or a settling activity after break. It is long enough to occupy a child properly and short enough to finish in one session, which matters more than it sounds.

What to look for in this drawing

There is no reference to be faithful to here, which is liberating and also the hard part. Give yourself one rule before you start - no two touching shapes share a colour, say - and the page will hold together.

How to colour this page well

On a page with this many separate areas, the usual mistake is to start colouring immediately and run out of patience halfway. Plan a limited palette first - four to six colours - and decide which one repeats most often. Then work in passes: lay down every area of your first colour across the whole page, then the second, and so on. It is faster, it keeps the result coherent, and it means an unfinished page still looks intentional.

Because the outlines are heavy, you can colour right up to them without much care - the black line hides any overshoot. That is exactly why thick-line pages suit small hands.

What to do with it once it is coloured

Abstract pages make good gift wrap and book covers once coloured, because there is no right way up. Cut one into strips and weave them for a simple paper mat.

Printed at full size the artwork sits within a 0.25 in margin, so there is a clean border to cut along if you are mounting or framing it.