Fitted, Flushed, Twisting Clothing I am trying to make a flowing twisting detail for a clothing set. If you look at photo #1 you will see that it is flushed against the characters arm. That is what I want. However , I do not want it to be in that shape. Photo #3 is how I want the detail to appear, flushed and twisting perfectly around the arm. 

Photo #2 is simply the curve from photo #3, but with depth. Shrink wrap does not produce the desired effect.

The method used in photo #1 is simply selecting faces, duplicating and solidifying.

I have been trying to fix this for a very long time and nothing I do produces the desired effect. I obviously could just model and sculpt this, but being that I have hundreds of pieces that need this type of effect, I would like to complete this before the next decade.

Thanks for reading.
Considering you have hundreds of pieces like this, I am not sure this approach is good enough, but this is the best I have found so far.

The principle is to use a small square with an array, make it follow the curve and shrinkwrap it :



That can be also done using a bevel object with the curve, but the array allows to handle easier the polycount.

Doing that, the main problem is to align the twist / tilt of the curve so that all is aligned along the arm (same problem with a bevel object).

So I had to tilt Ctrl+T each vertex of the curve to align the band with the arm :



Once done, apply the modifiers and you can refine the model (a bit), for instance adding curve and stretch it a bit :