Also called indigo, blue printed cloth is dyed in the indigo. Before overtaken by machine-printed cloth, blue printed cloth was widely used as the staple material for making clothes. The crafts of making blue printed cloth include two types: starching with leaked block and printing with wood block. The blue printed cloth made by the first method used to be called "striped cloth", "flower-watering cloth" or "scraped cloth." This printing method processes like this: they engrave block with oil paper, then scrape the cloth with the mixture of bean powder and lime, and then soak the cloth into the indigo, and at last the mixture is removed. The wood block printed cloth is printed by the directly coloured block. This method used to be widely used in Europe; in China it is used traditionally by the Uygurs.
