Although with the invention of synthetic dyes it is now possible to apply colour directly to fabric, this process will not produce washable colours with natural dyes. Instead, designs first had to be printed either with a mordant or with a resist, and the entire fabric then immersed in the dye bath.

The traditional textile printing tool in the Middle East and Europe was the wooden block. During the Industrial Revolution in Europe, metal plates and then metal rollers were used instead, at first for mordants and resists, and then for the new dyes when these were developed.